What to Paint: Hills & Mountains in Watercolour

April 2015

Peter Woolley brings us a new addition to Search Press' What to Paint series looking at hills and mountains in watercolour. Free outlines of each of Peter's inspiring paintings (24 in total) are included at the back of the book so you can get straight on with the painting. There's helpful advice on how to transfer the image to your paper, plus information on basic watercolour techniques, such as transparent washes, tonal landscapes, and how to paint rocks. Demonstrations include a view from the summit, snow and shadows, hills and lakes and sunshine and rain.

March 2015

The What to Paint series is the big brother of Ready to Paint. The larger outlines give you more of an image to develop and the instructions are less detailed, appealing to those who have picked up the basic skills but still need a degree of hand-holding when it comes to composition, perspective and drawing. Because the images are printed on normal book paper and need to be assembled, it's worth investing in some Tracedown paper to make the transfer process easy. Each book contains 24 paintings and, as well as the outlines, you also get the finished result as the author painted it, some basic instructions, palette information and break outs of some of the important details. The idea is not to copy (thought you can do that if you want), but to create your own interpretation from a starting point a little way on from the blank page.

Peter Woolley's subjects range from rough crags to more gently rounded uplands and he concentrates a bit more on different weather conditions and times of the year. He'll show you how to create atmospheric mists, the warm light of an autumn day and the chill of a winter afternoon. His paintings include both cloudy and clear skies, demonstrating how lighting affects the appearance of foregrounds and of recession. He'll show you how to use shading to give shape and substance to rocks and valleys as well as how to handle that all-important point where land meets sky in gentle transition.

July 2015

A keen hiker, Woolley (Drawing Towards Watercolour) shares here many tips and tricks for realizing the settings of his pastime, hills and mountains, in the medium of watercolor. Techniques detailed in the guide, such as transparent washes and counterchange, help sharpen one's watercolor skills. Two dozen short designs are included that focus on Earth's high places. As is customary for titles in this series, the projects consist of finished paintings, a specific color palette list for each, and schematic line drawings of each work, which readers can use as a starting point for their own projects by photocopying and tracing. They may practice their skills by reproducing the author's paintings as faithfully as they please or altering the compositions and color palettes as creatively as they wish. VERDICT Beginning and intermediate artists are the best audience for this guide.