Watercolor Journeys: Create Your Own Travel Sketchbook
Schilling, a self-proclaimed "watercolor evangelist," is actually a dentist by profession; on stints as a volunteer dentist in developing nations, and later, as a part-time dentist for a Holland America Line crew, Schilling painted the myriad watercolors he highlights in this slender volume. Part memoir, part catalogue and part painting how-to, Schilling's book shows him turning his eye and his quick hand to Venice shipyards, African hibiscus, Jerusalem churches and Alaskan mountains in colored sketches that are technically adept and generically pretty, awash in cadmium yellow, sap green, burnt sienna and cobalt blue. Despite Schilling's nod towards themed groupings, the sketches and paintings feel positioned by a mixture of whimsy and chance. In two consecutive pages titled "Home is Where the Heart Is," for instance, Schilling features pictures of his studio in Africa, a ramshackle cottage he saw near an African clinic, a lighthouse on Isle Royal, the plumbing where he stayed in Nunligran, Russia, and grand home in Provideniya, Russia. (The lengthy captions have much to say about the individual scenes but offer little to link them together.) He offers three-step demonstrations of techniques-e.g., creating the illusion of depth, painting from a photo, making "value sketches" and rendering realistic wood and weathered buildings-explaining them in text and pictures and even including a list of necessary supplies, but this is not a book for the novice. Instead, it's a personal and generally pleasing look at Schilling's favorite memories, which travelers of an artistic bent may find inspiring as they seek out more intimate records of their adventures than snapshots or gift-shop postcards afford.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.