Gary Greene - Creating Radiant Flowers in Colored Pencil: 64 step-by-step demos / 54 kinds of flowers

Garys work is fascinating. Seeing several of his paintings at a time is mesmerizing. At first glance, our eyes widen, then squint. Foolishly, we try to make sense of the bouncing three-dimensional shapes crashing through what we still believe is a flat drawing surface. But when we let ourselves go, the sensation becomes eerily that of Alice falling into the rabbit holeexhilarating and scary at the same time. Compelled to stare, we experience a gradual increase of tactile tingling.

Between our fingers we actually feel the delicate thinness of a rose petal; our noses twitch at the heady aroma of garden-fresh bell peppers. And, with a shiver, we scrape our fingernails across the grating texture of ship metal lying at anchor. Gradually, our eyes bob with the abstract waves of blue and purple, gold and redand we suddenly begin to know Gary. He loves color and form and texture and what they do to the senses, both his and ours. The more we look at his work, the more were sure he loves to giggle, laugh and tease. But as quickly as we get a sense of the artist, his work draws us back to the sensual art of looking.

Good art always does that. Gary has the ability to make us discover and fall in love with the greatness in the simplest of objects. His interplay of similar, competing and repetitive textures is an attention grabber. But then, just as quickly, the tension relaxes as we actually hear the lapping of wavelets beneath a sailboard or feel the various thicknesses of multicolored paint layers peeling from an old set of oars or smile at the smell of gray metal once covered with slick, glossy car enamel. Garys images not only defy the surface, they take us to another world. This new flower book is simply another set of sights and sounds and smells for us to enjoy and learn from.

Its impossible to be neutral about Gary Greenes workand just as impossible to be neutral about Gary Greene.

With all this interest, why were there no books on painting flowers with colored pencil? I discovered colored pencil twenty-eight years ago, when there was only one book on the subject: Bet Borgesons landmark The Colored Pencil. Today there are dozens, as many artists are abandoning their watercolors, oils, acrylics and pastels and discovering the creative possibilities of colored pencil. Youre now reading the revised edition of the first book on how to paint flowersalways a favorite subjectwith colored pencil, the hot new art medium! Creating Radiant Flowers in Colored Pencil depicts a variety of flowers in a simple straightforward way without the visual distractions of backgrounds and containers or the verbal distractions of artspeak. Its not intended to be a book on botanical illustrations, nor is it a paint by numbers book. For example, you may want to paint a still life with a certain kind of flower, such as a zinnia. This book will show you how to paint a zinnia, along with sixty-three other flowers.