Title: Gives us a bass
Product review: I believe that Douglas Dawson is a sincere teacher, but I found this book to be a litany of rules, tricks, and gew-gaws for obtaining effects -- without a governing vision. (Contrast the similarly-named "Capturing Radiant Color in Oils" by Susan Sarback, which is above all a book about seeing and reporting what you see, and in spite of its title the most helpful book I have found for my approach to pastels.) Some of Dawson's rules are in the category of "duh!" and others make no sense. His points are usually illustrated by his own work, including landscapes (quite interesting), cityscapes (often dramatically lit but oddly unmoving), and portraits (sappy, sentimentalized, and including a few real bodice-rippers). The old saw says, "give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." Dawson gives us a bass, and not a very fresh one.
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