Creating Radiant Flowers in Colored Pencil: 64 step-by-step demos / 54 kinds of flowers Paperback – May 25, 2012

This book by author Gary Green is extremely impressive. It is tailored to colored pencil artists who are drawing specifically flowers. It is not oriented toward "botanical illustrations" but specifically to floral portraits. The book contains good sections on basic materials, comparing the different types of colored pencils on the market. In addition, it discusses drawing surfaces, but not in great detail. It explains the basic items needed to make good floral representations. And it covers the techniques of "Layering," "Burnishing," "Underpainting" and color mixing.Its highest usefulness is in the step by step instructions it gives the reader/artist in precisely how to create over 56 different specific flower representations. Most of the flowers also have included a "Reference Photograph" so that the artist/reader can understand what the flower truly looked like in real life. While those reference photographs do seem to have a "retouched" look, still they are pretty useful photographs to help the artist/reader see what the natural appearance of the flower is and then Mr. Green's illustrations show what the picture will look like at different steps of the process.I would seriously recommend this book for artist/readers who are just starting out in the drawing of flowers. The step-by-step instructions are some of the best I have seen in any book of its type. Also, they are not arduously long and involved. Some books have instructions that are so complex that one finds themselves putting those books on the shelf for a later time when they have 'mastered the basics' and can concentrate on the highly detailed instructions. This book is NOT such a book. This book can be used by all levels of artists from beginners to long time artists and even experts who are just starting to paint flowers as a new subject.I would highly recommend this book for all of the above levels of artists. If you want to find a step-by-step instruction process to get you from never having painted flowers to painting recognizable and even beautiful representations, this book will serve you well. Do seriously consider adding it to your library of artistic instructionals.

Lovely illustrationsHas how to do ideas but…Not really enough details to teach how to draw….

I loved this book, it is a great book to understand the craft and how to get good at it. I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn. Excellent information on pencils, what they do, how they work and how to use them. It is a great booklet to learn but does little for creating your own style, but you do need to learn how to do this if you want to be good at it.For any Artist:Color Mixing Bible, by Ian SidawayColour Pencils and Graphite:Ultimate Guide to Colored Pencil, GreeneColored Pencil Secrets for Success, KullbergColoured Pencil Solution Book, Gildow and NewtonMasterful colour, SteinbergColored Pencil Painting Bible, NickelsenPaint Radiant Realism in Watercolour, Ink and colored Pencil, RossDrawing Realistic Textures in Pencil, HillberryThose are just my favorites so far, I have a ton as I believe that you need to keep learning to stay fresh.

I ordered this expecting another good book by Gary Greene. Sadly, this one was not on par with some of his other books. There is a big difference between “Step-by-step demos” (as the cover text promises) and what you get in this book. A "demonstration" implies it will be illustrated by examples. As you’ll see in my photos, those illustrations are sadly lacking in MANY cases.There is no consistency throughout the book from flower to flower either. Some of them have small reference photos, some don’t. Although there are SOME step-by-step demonstrations with illustrations, the majority of the book seems to be either partially completed flowers and a page of text telling you what colors to use in what order, or a completed flower and descriptive text. While text instructions might be appropriate for some things, you cannot just describe/read about something as visual as a drawing and expect to achieve the same results.It would be great if a new edition were put out that had step-by-step photos along the way for ALL the flowers.

As a teaching tool for the beginner, this book has severe limitations. The book does present step by step procedures on how to copy images of flowers. However - keep in mind that if you expect to duplicate Mr Green's colors, you will need to have on hand more than 200 colored pencils, from several different manufacturers. That's an awful lot to ask of a beginner, or even an intermediate. The other severe limitation for the beginner is that very little of the technique is explained. Most of the "directions" are on the order of "layer with this, this, this, this, and this...." several different colors in one small space - and then on to another small space with another several colors. It's possible (but unlikely) that an expert could figure out what Mr Green means, but the newcomer has no hope of that.Still, the book is not useless, just limited. There are flowers one could trace, and then try to "paint" or color - just don't expect results which are anything like those in the book.

We have here a veritable flower market between the covers of this amazing book, with page after page of step by step guidelines for creating beautiful flower paintings. For each project there's a list of the colored pencils used, and the steps indicated.Many of them involve a solvent called Bestine, which smells like gasoline (in fact I think it may actually be gasoline).The style of the art is realistic and fairly detailed.I don't think this is meant to be a free-standing volume. Although the chapter on techniques is an overall summary, it's so compressed as to seem contradictory at times, e.g., page 20. This seems to be more of an add-on or companion volume for Gary Greene's Ultimate Guide to Colored Pencil.I think this book is well worth the purchase price. I plan to study it and use it for a good long while.

This book contains 64 step by step demos of 54 different kinds of flowers, by the author, Gary Greene, and 6 other contributing artists.As is usual with most American books, the coloured pencils used are mainly Prismacolor, although be aware that Caran d'Ache Pablo, Derwent Watercolour, Derwent Artists, Derwent Coloursoft, Caran d'Ache Supracolor II, Faber-Castell Polychromos, and Caran d'Ache Luminance 6901 are also used in some of the demos as well. This posed the usual problem for me as I do not have all these brands (I mainly have Polychromos). However, I did find a printable conversion and comparison chart of the different pencils at [...] (under tutorials and kits), which might be of help.Some of the flowers in the book were quite stylised - this is no botanical coloured pencils book, but it's handy to have step by step demos when you are a beginner and there is no tutor immediately to hand to advise and help.There are sections on the different types of pencils (wax, oil, or water soluable) tools and materials, taking reference photographs, and also layering, burnishing, and underpainting (wash) with solvents.A good book for a beginner and plenty to keep you busy. I've got other coloured pencil books, but some are a bit advanced for me at the moment, so I'm pleased to add this one to my collection.

The illustrations in the book and the lessons are numerous. But, unfortunately, the author does not describe in great detail how to apply color in his lessons. It is very difficult to independently understand from his descriptions how to apply color. As a result, according to his lessons, my drawings came out worse than if I had drawn them myself. Therefore, I am dissatisfied with the book.

I downloaded this to my kindle so maybe the book form is better the reference photos were tiny and some reference photos were missing altogether like the California poppy for example just had a list saying colour the petals with this colour very difficult to do without a reference there was no real starting points for the flowers that were shown they had colour already on them and the start point drawings were so faint they could not be seen even when I zoomed in close this was not an inexpensive book and I feel it's been a waste of money really the only good point were his end pictures which I had to zoom in on due to the small size

Product advertised as very good but cover was yellowed and marked. Luckily pages in book okay. It’s a lovely, if old book, on drawing coloured pencil flowers. Good images of how to draw actual flower shapes and how to shade and blend colours.

Another brilliant book from Gary Greene. I am addicted to pencils and enjoy any help and encouragement, it has been a poor relation to other medium for far too long.