Product Description: This is a landmark book for artists.
This edition catalogues the changes in watercoloor paint manfufacturing since the first edition in 1991 and 1995. Ten new companies have been featured, bringing the total to 29. The information in this book enables the caring artist to buy their expensive materials with confidence. The 'bible' to many and a must for the concerned artist.
Aren't all Cadium Reds alike? ^ It is amazing how different the colors are look and behave. Confused by the labeling PB42 or Hue or ASTM I? Why does the same labelings (i.e. PR108) appear on multiple colors? What do those weird names really represent? It makes for interesting reading - the history, the best, and the worst products. I always wondered why some of my watercolors looked grainy. Not all colors by the best manufacturer rate highly. This book looks like a lifelong effort that will save your experimenting forever to find a good Cadium Red color, a member of one of the 10 major color groupings covered.
Invaluable reference--buy before you buy paint! ^ If you spend hours or days painting a watercolor picture, you are going to want to use the best possible paints. You won't want to see your painting fade, become blotchy, or otherwise deteriorate due to inferior paint. To prevent just that sort of thing, this reference book attempts to educate you on the pigments used in watercolor paints--their lightfastness especially, but also other qualities. Which pigments will fade or become blotchy over time? Which will stay strong and true? This book does its best to exhaustively answer those questions.
This book has been updated several times. It is due for another update, but since there is no telling when or even if such an update will be produced, it is still so valuable that I highly recommend getting it now before you buy any (more) watercolor paints.
Although I am reading it all the way through (because that's the kind of person I am), this is not a book to be read, but rather referred to. Let's say, for example, that you want to replace a red you've been using. You would turn to the description of the red pigments, glance through to find the pigments that have been rated highly lightfast by the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Measurement) and that have the color quality you want, then you would turn to the paint reference section to see what brands offer a red using the chosen pigment(s). Even if you cannot find a brand that suits you (and you should be able to), armed with the information in this book, you can go shopping with confidence, checking the paint tubes to make sure they have the pigment you want and not some pigment that will fade and ruin your painting.
For that alone, this book is valuable.
Allow me to address some of the comments other reviewers have made. One reviewer commented that the Da Vinci paints are student grade. I disagree. I've tried a number of different brands, and Da Vinci's artist-grade paints are wonderful--buttery, smooth, and a pleasure to use. (I also like many of Windsor & Newton's paints.) Yes, Michael Wilcox contracted with Da Vinci to create his own custom line of paints, but, as he states in the latest edition of this book, he did that many years after the initial editions in which he had already praised and recommended many of Da Vincis's paints. And he doesn't hold back in criticizing many of the Da Vinci student-grade paints, nor does he hold back in praising or criticizing any brand of paint.
I believe that Mr. Wilcox has tried to be as objective as possible, and I also do *not* see any inappropriate pushing of his own line of paints. He has a single very low-key page--at the back of the book!--describing the Michael Wilcox School of Color, which lets you be the judge of whether you want to look into it more. I also haven't seen any advertisements of his line of paints in the book yet, and, as I said, I'm reading it cover to cover. (I'm in the reds at the moment, though, so I could be wrong, but if the remaining pages follow the pattern already established, I don't expect to see any such advertisement in the remaining pages.)
Another reviewer said that this book has out-of-date paints (it does) and *doesn't* reflect reformulations (but it does). Had they read the book (though perhaps they had an older edition), they would have found Mr. Wilcox's reasons for including discontinued paints. He states that some people may have those older paints still in their supplies, and so he wanted to present that information for those people. If you are a watercolor artist, you know how long paints last. I have tubes I purchased ten years ago. I know artists who have tubes they purchased even longer ago. How valuable it is to be able to read what is in those paints, and possibly avoid using something that will, in the end, disappoint!
He also provides information on old formulas, with an arrow pointing to a new entry on the reformulated paint. Again, including information on both the old and new formulations is valuable. If you are an artist with the old formulation in your supplies, you will want to know that (A) it is perhaps unsuitable and (B) there is a better replacement available for it. Yes, it is possible that there have been even further reformulations since the last edition, but each edition has been keeping up with the times, and I fully expect that, should Mr. Wilcox produce another edition, it will be as up-to-date as possible.
The one valid criticism of this book is that it could be better organized and better edited. DEFINITELY. There are missing words, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, dead-end sentences, orphan sentences, sentence fragments, and so on pretty much on every page. The organization of the material could also be better, and more information on both his testing methods and on the ASTM standards would be greatly appreciated. Mr. Wilcox should perhaps be told that there are copy editors he can hire on a contract basis to copy-edit his works and improve them vastly. Better yet, a developmental editor, who will be more expensive but also more valuable, could help with the organization and content as well.
An alphabetical index of at least all the colors would be great too. A professional indexer could create such.
These are the reasons I gave this book four stars instead of five are (A) the age of the book, (B) the errors, and (C) the need to better organize and expand the content, especially the information on testing standards and methods.
However, flaws aside, this is an enormous work, enormously valuable, with clearly hundreds if not thousands of hours of work put into it, and the information shows that effort.
It should also be mentioned that, before Michael Wilcox published the first edition of this book, whether you would get good paints from even some of the major manufacturers was a hit-or-miss proposition. Many non-lightfast pigments were used, and poor quality paints were created, even by the giants. When this book hit the scene, it had a great deal of positive influence on the watercolor manufacturers. Many of them dropped or reformulated their more questionable paints. That in itself tells you the value of the information in this book. Of course, the ASTM had a lot to do with it too, but without this book pointing out the lack of clothes on the emperor, I am not sure how much weight the ASTM standards alone would have had.
If you are a watercolor artist, do yourself the favor of adding this book to your reference library.
The least favorite book of my collection ^ Inaccurate information abounds. Tiresome reading. Little good information. Overly expensive...sorry I bought it.
valuable resource ^ This exhaustive (not to be confused with exhausting) research-based volume should be mandatory reading for all those artists interested in giving their customers their utmost quality of paint on works of art sold. So many paints are not light-fast, or are 'fugitive' (absolutely unreliable), or are packaged by the manufacturer as 'new' colors when they are, in fact, only creative blends of basic colors that any artist can create with colors they likely already have. This book, covering many of the watercolor paint producers in the Western world, exposes these flawed paints, but also gives credit where due to the top-notch pigments and their manufacturers. Details of content, health ratings, color-fastness and quality of brush use are easily understood. Fantastic color swatches (before and after exposure to light) are beside each manufacturer's sample. My only complaint is that this is the only edition available (pub. 1991), as the author said it would be updated periodically, which does not yet appear to have happened. There were only a couple of Quinacridone colors 12 years ago at the time of publication, whereas there are many more now.
outdated poor quality book, dont waste your money ^ a poor quality book, badly written and full of mistakes. wilcox is clearly a charlaton, he rants on about other paints being poor quality whilst trying to sell you his own. I do not recomend this book to anyone. buy it at your peril
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