Award-winning artist Angela Gaughan shares with you a life time's worth of experience in art.

This book provides an insight into the distinctive techniques Angela Gaughan uses to achieve her amazingly detailed, life-like wildlife paintings. It is an inspirational guide to painting in acrylics; both for experienced artists who are interested in Angela's methods, and those wishing to improve their skills.

Sumptuous colour is at the heart of Angela's vivid, beautiful art work. Her unique techniques combine the advantages of acrylics and oils. In this inspirational book, Angela shares with you a lifetime's worth of experience in art. Learn her unique approach to using acrylics to produce depth and character in your own wildlife artwork, and follow the step-by-step demonstrations as you build up your skills.

The book begins with detailed coverage of the materials, tools and media Angela uses. Chapters on colour and light, gathering reference, and composition build upon Angela's working method guiding you through her stages of working, from using photographic references, through completing a tonal drawing, to using transparent washes and opaque colours to create a full painting. The instructional techniques then connect into substantial chapters on colour, composition and finish off with masterwork techniques to help more advanced artists push their artwork further.

About the Author

Angela was born and educated in Wales, where she studied portrait painting with Andrew Vicari, a former student of the prestigious Slade School of Art. She is most renowned for her commissioned portraits and wildlife studies. Angela works in many mediums and exhibits regularly, with many of her paintings in private collections all over the world. She has demonstrated for Daler Rowney, Derwent Pencils, The Artist and Leisure Painter magazines and Chromacolour at a variety of shows, exhibitions and also on television. Angela is President and founder member of The Tamworth Society of Artists; is a Professional Associate member of the SAA; and is a regular contributor to the Leisure Painter magazine. She holds regular workshops, demonstrations and classes in her own studio.

She has won a number of prestigious awards including The David Shepherd Award 2017 and The Simon Combes Award 2018 by The Wildlife Art Society International.

Visit Angela's website www.angelagaughan.co.uk.

Reviews

Angela Gaughan is a fantastic wildlife artist, I can say this with confidence because the reproduction in this large format book is supremely good. Angela works in acrylics and achieves levels of detail you'll find it hard to believe possible. Not only does she - when necessary - manage to depict individual hairs, but you can see them here, along with the brushstrokes she uses to create them.

This is hyperrealism and, if that's your preference, this is a book to dive into with relish. There is an excellent balance between it being a showcase, which the work demands, an analysis of style and straightforward instruction. The level at which Angela works would never suggest a beginner's guide and this is much more of a masterclass. Demonstrations are few and assume a considerable amount of basic knowledge and experience. An advanced worker will never feel that they're being over-bothered with elementary details.

-- Henry Malt * The Artist *

There's a variety of material in this utterly enthralling book, but by far the majority of it is of wildlife, and that's what you'd buy it for. I've always been surprised by the success in the practical art market of books which deal with such sharp focus and fine detail. I don't mean to denigrate the skills of amateur artists, but this kind of thing is almost certainly beyond the capabilities of more than a few. The truth is, I suspect, that it's aspirational and you'd certainly be pleased if you could come up with something even half as good.

Although there are demonstrations here, they aren't really the focus of the book, which is much more of a masterclass aimed at those who already have quite a lot more than the basic skills. If you can already paint animals, you'll be glad at the lack of rehearsal of the basics you already know. As far as materials are concerned, Angela works mostly in acrylics.

The results are stunning. Angela absolutely understands form, colouring, posture and behaviour and here it's not only her creatures that are believable, but their settings and their place in them. It's true that she works a lot from photographs, but those don't always give quite the right composition or feature the perfect specimen. The art is to provide what nature intended, rather in the way of the identification guide, which shows a typical rather than exact example.

The majority of the subjects are large wildlife - apes, elephants, big cats - but there are some domestic ones as well as some figurative work that demonstrates similar skills. There's not enough of this to make it a reason for purchase, but it adds variety and a further dimension.

And now we must turn to the production, which is the jewel in the book's crown. This is a slightly oversize volume and excellent use has been made of the space, both to showcase finished paintings and to feature details and stages at a good size. The quality of the reproduction is stunning. Angela's work concentrates on fine detail and every hair and brushstroke are clearly visible. Going through, I started to wonder whether some of the images weren't quite up to snuff and were perhaps not quite as sharp as they might be. Further inspection showed that this is absolutely not the case and that what I was actually seeing was the texture of the painting surface. Yes, it's that good.

Only a hundred years ago, colour reproduction was so coarse that you could see the individual dots of ink with the naked eye. Photo litho improved that and then mechanical tolerances in the printing presses themselves allowed much finer register and smaller dots, which you now need a powerful magnifier to see.

For all that, there's much that can go wrong and choice of paper is a major stumbling block. Search Press's production department has been at the top of its game for some time, but this surpasses anything I've seen, even from more august publishing houses dealing with fine art. That they have achieved this with a cover price of just under GBP20 is barely credible and you have to suspect witchcraft may be involved! If you're involved with book production, you should have a copy of this, just to remind yourself of what's possible. You have nowhere to hide and there are no excuses for anything less.

So, to sum up: an amazing book in every respect.

-- Henry Malt * Artbookreview.net *

I fell in love straightaway with the incredible art work in this book. Just beautiful. The book itself is a really good guide and resource for creating wildlife art- easy to follow, clear and helpful advice. I would recommend this for everyone- even ambitious beginners.

The style of writing is pitched just right so as not to be off-putting for those who are just starting in their artistic journey. An inclusive book where the enthusiasm and compassion of the author just seeps through.

I thoroughly recommend this gorgeous book and I cannot wait to get started painting! A super addition to my art book collection.

-- Debi D * Amazon *

Stunning wildlife paintings and inspiration for artists.

A good balance of photos of beautiful paintings of wildlife to inspire, techniques and a brief history of the artist. I found it an enjoyable read as a stand-alone book, and know I will keep coming back to it as reference for my artworks going forward. In my opinion it would suit somebody with a bit of experience in painting rather than a raw beginner, but maybe that's because Angela's artwork is so exquisite! I love it.

-- Christine Ingram * Amazon Customer Review *

I fell in love straightaway with the incredible art work in this book. Just beautiful. The book itself is a really good guide and resource for creating wildlife art- easy to follow, clear and helpful advice. I would recommend this for everyone- even ambitious beginners.

The style of writing is pitched just right so as not to be off-putting for those who are just starting in their artistic journey. An inclusive book where the enthusiasm and compassion of the author just seeps through.

I thoroughly recommend this gorgeous book and I cannot wait to get started painting! A super addition to my art book collection.

-- Kitty Luna * Amazon Customer Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781782217985
Author Angela Gaughan
Format Hardback
Page Count 144
Imprint Search Press Ltd
Publisher Search Press Ltd
Weight(grams) 864g
Dimensions(mm) 280mm * 216mm * 16mm