Always wanted to paint
in watercolors, but don’t know how to start? This book
gives you the basics so you can begin your artistic journey.
I like the way this book is in two sections. Firstly you learn
what to buy and why, then work through simple exercises in
perspective and color mixing. You can discover how to draw
common elements in pictures as well as skies, water, trees
and simple figures. All of this takes it as read that what
you want to paint in watercolour are landscapes rather than
portraits or abstracts, but the cover gives you a good idea
of what to expect. The second half consists of several projects
to work through, complete with drawings to trace in a similar
way to Search Press? award winning Ready To Paint series.
Six of these are used in simple exercises to demonstrate useful
aspects of watercolors such as painting water, skies, trees,
snow and more. The other six are full-blown paintings using
all the skills just learned and encompass most of the popular
rural landscape subjects. These include a bluebell wood, snow
scene, mountains, seascape and the English Lake District.
Each project or exercise has plenty of staged photographs
showing what has been added and a short caption explaining
it all. Mr. Palmer is clearly fond of water and you won’t
find any exotic or cityscapes in here, but if you want to
paint this type of scene this is an excellent way to learn.
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