Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Watercolour For The Absolute Beginner
Matthew Palmer

Search Press
29 January 2014/ ISBN 9781844488254
How-To Books/Painting

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

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.



UK Reviewer: Rachel Hyde's work can be found in Sewing World, Sew Hip, Popular Crafts and other magazines. Her craft blog is Green Thoughts
Reviewed 2014
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