Too Artsy?

Pauline Cherret writes with the authority of an experienced teacher. Each page of An Introduction to Chinese Brush Painting reads like an excerpt from an art class.

However, this means that the emphasis of the book is on actually brush painting rather than giving a sense of the art's trivia and history. The subtitle-esque line "technique - light - color - composition - style" on the cover should have been clear that this is an instructional work rather than an informative one, but still.

This book's a delight to just read because it gives a good sense of how someone with authoritative experience in an artistic field communicates that experience. And getting samples of such a tone and register is important work for anyone looking to write such characters at some point or other.

Getting back to the instructiveness of the book, though, some of the diagrams are a little bit cluttered by too many arrows and description. Surely you could learn how to brush paint from this book, but it would need to be studied as much as a teacher's method or your own lecture notes.