Watercolor Lessons from Eliot O'Hara Hardcover – January 1, 1974

All visual art is a subjective kind of thing. It either appeals or it doesn't. In some cases a work of art can stop one dead in one's tracks and even keep coming back in one's memory. This is personally true in a particular watercolor by Eliot O'Hara called "Ebbing Tide". At one time it was owned by the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey. Anyway as a young man my local public library owned a book by Eliot O'Hara (not this one)that had a reproduction of this painting. I loved it and wished that I could paint watercolors as well the artist. In my opinion O'Hara was a visual genius. No he wasn't a Mastisse or a Picasso, but in his own medium of watercolor few artists could or can compare. The best thing about this book is that it distills all of Eliot O'Hara's knowledge into various subject chapters. Also each chapter gives examples of the artist's art to illustrate the points discussed. If ever there were a watercolor painting book worthy of being reprinted this has to be the one!

I ordered this book because I'd heard for many years about how wonderful Eliot O'Hara was as a watercolor teacher. But after looking through it, I decided it was one of the worst art books I have ever seen. The artwork was old fashioned and clichéd and it was all about, "ok, now we do water" and "ok, now we do rocks" kind of thing and frankly very boring. I therefore decided I would be doing my students a disservice to introduce them to this awful stuff and made the decision to toss it.