ArtBook Review, September 2019
Search Press have supersized their Paint Pad series. Not so much a triple-stack cheeseburger with a quart of fizzy sugar as the full 48 ounce free-if-you-can-finish-it T-bone. These are BIG.

A lot of thought has clearly gone into the format, though. An A3 book is not easy to manage so, instead of the portfolio styling of the parent series, these are pads where you’re clearly intended to pull out not just the sheets of watercolour paper with their pre-printed outlines, but the instruction pages as well. Tape the paper down onto a drawing board, pin the instructions on the wall and it all starts to make sense. This isn’t mentioned in the How To Use This Book introduction, but it’s the obvious solution.
The content has also been pared down severely in the light of this not being something to sit down and read. There’s no list of materials or introduction to techniques, although there is a “what you’ll need” list for each section. The whole thing is about the image and completing it. Once you’ve painted the five exercises, the rest of the book is basically disposable. That sounds likes sacrilege for something costing a whisker under sixteen pounds/ twenty-five dollars, but your return is the five full-size paintings you can frame and hang on the wall.
The quality is stunning. Each painting is shown in its complete state and, at this size, any shortcomings in the reproduction are going to be immediately obvious and a massive frustration. Full use has been made of the large page size to lay the instructions out clearly and illustrate them in detail. Everything is really clear and, if you’re adopting my suggestion of pinning them on a wall, easy to see.
This is quite a departure and a lot more than just a vary-it-a-bit exercise to generate extra sales. There’s an elegant simplicity to it that’ll make serious art easily accessible to even the raw beginner.

Features the work of popular watercolour artists Julie King, Fiona Peart and Janet Whittle.

After graduating with a first-class degree in textile design, Julie King worked as an in-house designer of household textiles before freelancing for several years, creating fabrics, wallpapers and ceramics. She was awarded the Society of Botanical Artists Certificate of Botanical Merit for a freestyle interpretation of an iris.
Julie, who lives in Kent, teaches both landscape and flower painting in venues ranging from National Trust and privately owned gardens to cruise liners. She also contributes articles to the Leisure Painter magazine.
Fiona Peart is a professional artist and fully qualified art tutor, specialising in watercolour and drawing techniques. She writes regularly for The Artist, Leisure Painter and StartArt magazines.
Janet Whittle is a professional artist and qualified teacher who specialises in flowers and landscapes in watercolour and pastel. Janet Whittle has received awards from the major UK art groups, including the Society of Botanical Artists' Founder President's Honour in 1999, and The Society of Flower Painters' Award for Excellence for their Jersey Exhibition.