Painting With Water-Soluble Colored Pencils by Gary Greene (1999, Hardcover)

I bought Gary Greene's "Painting with Water-Soluble Colored Pencils" because of the cover art. That big fiery yellow red-tipped dahlia on the cover was irresistible, and I'd seen Gary Greene's artwork in Bernard Poulin's colored pencil book. I knew Gary Greene did incredible realism with colored pencils, and I was not disappointed in how he demonstrates it in this book. He chose a single example project, a pair of red and yellow Rainier cherries, and demonstrates how to render them in literally a dozen different ways.

Without judging which techniques are better, Gary Greene demonstrates all of them in enough detail that I think a beginner could master the techniques in this book. Unfortunately, while he reviews and gives color charts for five different brands of water-soluble colored pencils, he did not mention either Cretacolor Aqua Monolith or Prismacolor Watercolor pencils, the two brands I own. So as with all colored pencils books, look at the set you have and the colors he recommends and try to match your pencils to the printed color charts. By supplying printed color charts for all five brands he uses, you can get the closest match to the specific colors mentioned.

Since all art instruction books have this flaw of brand-specific color recommendations for projects, that did not diminish my enjoyment or continued use of "Painting with Water-Soluble Colored Pencils." Greene is a genius in his medium and this book represents a variation on his specialty medium. I'd get any colored pencils book he wrote.