Discovering new heroes

The local family run book shop closed when the final member of the owners decided to retire. The final clearance sale was a treasure trove as there were numbers of interesting books being sold off at ridiculously low prices. Amongst them I discovered an artist that had never crossed my conscientiousness before, in fact I had never seen anything like it before. The book was the Watercolour Secrets of Charles Reid. The illustrations fascinated me, produced in a style that defied any description for me. I couldn't relate to all of them immediately but those that hit me did so like a steam train. I had to find out more. The book became a daily companion as I tried to come to terms with a new language, hard, soft, values, complementary colours, lost, found, contour drawing, warm, cool etc. Another job, trying out some of the techniques used by Charles - below is an early attempt at copying one of his images.