Saturday 3 January 2015

New Charles Reid Book

Just announced a new Charles Reid book called `Charles Reid Sketchbook'. This is a collection of Charles sketches from over the years and is not a new `How to' book. Apparently he has received many requests in the past from his students to buy his sketchbooks so this is the result. I, and others, did ask him to produce a new portrait book but he decided that `Watercolour Solutions' - excellent indeed - was to be his last. However this book was obviously easier to produce and so we now have it.


There are no details of size or number of pages but an e-mail to Jreid514@aol.com, or an enquiry via his Facebook page (Charles Reid Art), run by his daughter, would produce this information

It seems the book is self-produced, an increasingly popular process possibly due partly to disenchantment with the way some publishers are behaving. I experienced this myself with my last book some years ago. Charles mentioned he had been unhappy, especially because he had  several changes of editor - I recall he said three - when he was writing `Watercolour Solutions'.

In any event the book is here and is being sold at $131 in the USA, including postage, and $150 international. This approximates to £87 sterling and 104 euros. These are eye watering prices for an art book and I can only assume it is being marketed as a collectors item in a limited edition  which would partly explain the high price, but these are assumptions on my part. The book has to be ordered from the artist and details of how to do so are on the website www.charlesreidart.com 

I have most of Charles books on watercolour, the only exception being the first flower book, There are many examples of his sketches in some of them. Personally I've never done much sketching - something many will be critical of - and have never made a painting from a sketch.  It is just something I've found very difficult. Because of this and the fact I find the price on the high side I won't be adding this to my library but I'm sure many will. 

Obviously if I don't buy the book I can't review it but if any readers do I'd be happy to add a review to this piece.






2 comments:

Yvonne Harry said...

Interesting comments Peter.

LBM said...

Hello, did you ever happen to find a copy of this book? Or, do you know of any of your friends that own a copy? I'm trying to track down a copy and offer a larger amount than what they bought it for to make it worth their while. I'm hoping someone who bought the book has either had their fill of it or would be able to part with it in some way.. Unfortunately I can't find too many people that actually bought it to ask :(