A simple but comprehensive guide, offering warm and engaging encouragement for anyone looking to learn how to watercolor.
Simon’s how-to workbook aims to teach the fundamentals of watercolor techniques.
When taking up a new hobby, it’s often hard to know where to start or what to buy. In this introductory workbook, learning to paint with watercolors is laid out in a simple, easy-to-follow plan. The suggested materials list is simple without being too basic, with Simon noting to the reader: “I want you to see how much beauty you can create with minimal supplies and expense.” She recommends just two student-grade brushes, a waterproof-ink pen, and nine suggested paint colors, only one of which she recommends buying at professional quality. The text notes that the project pages are printed on premium watercolor paper, meant to be painted upon directly. (A digital copy of the book was provided for review.) Before starting each exercise, the author explains methods clearly, including specific water-to-paint ratios, color “recipes” to create various shades, including a comprehensive guide for human skin tones, and, of course, various painting techniques, such as wet-in-wet, wet-on-dry, dry brushing, and more. To perfect these new skills, there are more than two dozen line drawings of plants and animals. For each, Simon indicates suggested colors and brushes at the top of the page alongside a completed full-color version of the painting. The painting process is meticulously described in anywhere from five to nine stages, with specific techniques helpfully made more prominent by using all-caps: “With your Round 4 brush, WASH an entire tulip flower (or just a few choice petals!) in a clear wash, leaving RESERVED areas on some petals, as well as the flower centers.” Simon’s voice is affable and supportive, giving the book the feeling of spending time with a talented friend. Her assurance that one can get beautiful results using easy-to-find materials is sure to be appreciated by newcomers to the craft.
A simple but comprehensive guide, offering warm and engaging encouragement for anyone looking to learn how to watercolor.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 9781950968268
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Paige Tate & Co
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.
The Top Chef host describes her journey to new heights.
For those who don’t know, Kish is a “gay Korean adopted woman, born in Seoul, raised in Michigan” and “a chef, a character, a host, and a cultural communicator—as well as a human being with a beating heart.” Though this book covers every step of her journey, every restaurant job and television role, and also discusses her experience as an adoptee (very positive) and a queer woman (late bloomer), the storytelling is so straightforward, lacking in suspense, character development, or dialogue, that it is basically a long version of its (longish) “About the Author.” Seemingly dramatic situations are not dramatized—when she was eliminated on her first Top Chef run, she assures us that she did the best she could, and drops it. “I can spare you the gory details (bouillabaisse and big personalities were involved).” Later, she cites a belief in protecting the privacy of others to omit the story of her first relationship with a woman. With no character development, neither does the reader get to know those who fall outside the privacy zone, like her best friend, Steph, and her wife, Bianca. When she gets mad, she says things like, “It’s a gross understatement to say I was crushed, beyond frustrated, and furious with the situation.” The fact that “I’ve never been a big reader” does not come as a surprise. It is more surprising when she confesses that “I believe the universe is selective about the moments in which it introduces life-changing prospects.”
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780316580915
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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