Watercolour Tips and Techniques

Nov 07

Here is a huge compendium volume containing the texts of four other books, giving an in-depth look at most aspects of watercolor painting. With twenty staged projects to work through and the sagacious advice of four professional artists, even the most inexperienced beginner ought to be able to produce some impressive results.

Each of the four books deals with a separate aspect of watercolor painting. These are how to begin, working from sketch to picture, perspective and the technical parts and creating mood and atmosphere. There is some repetition as each artist gives their own slant on what to buy and color mixing etc, but then you would also get that if you went to a class with more than one tutor, and a variety of viewpoints is a great way to see the versatility of a subject. This is very much a book about painting landscapes and seascapes, not still life, portraits or any other type of painting. The cover gives the clue to this, but having it in the title might be even better for anybody ordering online. But this minor gripe aside, beginners and improvers are in the best hands when they open this book and I recommend it to anybody who wants to learn how to paint watercolor landscapes.

Oct 07

This substantial tome packs an enormous amount of information into its 376 pages and covers basic techniques, sketching, perspective and mood & atmosphere. As such, it's a sound course which will admirably suit those who are at an early stage in learning to paint and provides pretty much all the information they will need in order to progress. It also takes a lot of the head-scratching out of deciding which books to buy and an investment of twenty quid here is not only a solid one, but should also save money in the long run.

If you're already a committed book buyer, though, have a careful look at the contents because this is not new material, but rather a bind-up of 4 titles which have already appeared in the similarly-named Search Press series. If you've already got some of these, be careful you aren't duplicating. At twenty pounds for four books that, separately, would cost you ten pounds each, though, you can't fault it for value.

Quite a lot of though has gone into the selection of material and the ordering of it, beginning with Arnold Lowrey's excellent beginner's guide (Starting to Paint) that covers all of the basics and goes on to look at techniques for capturing a variety of subjects including landscapes, seascapes, buildings and figures. Wendy Jelbert then covers the use of a sketchbook to make notes for later studio work, Geoff Kersey looks at the tricky subject of perspective and makes it easy to understand. Finally, Barry Herniman handles mood and atmosphere and shows you how to interpret your subject and use colour and brushwork to portray it in two dimensions.

If you want an introduction to painting, either for yourself or as a gift, you won't go far wrong with this.