If you want to learn to paint in watercolors and require a
good basic primer, this is a good choice. Concentrating on
landscapes, seascapes and portraits, you can build up your
skills as you complete the exercises and finish with a starter
gallery of six paintings.
This is the sort of book that Search Press does probably better
than anybody else. Originally published back in 2013 as William
Newton’s Complete Guide To Watercolour Painting
(ISBN 9781844488308), this is a new revised edition. The artist
is self-taught and wisely eschews the usual advice to buy
too much; instead he has sensible suggestions as to what a
beginner needs and the reasons why. His section on other materials
does not feature anything expensive and contains many items
you will already own. There is a section on color including
mixing advice, mixing greens, working with a limited palette,
and another on tone including painting light, shadows and
implying distance. Learn the tricks of the trade such as wet
into wet, dry brush work, using masking fluid, etc., and essentials
like using a camera, composition and perspective. The rest
of the book contains the six projects which are helpfully
step by step, building up the picture a bit at a time with
the aid of many captioned photographs. Unlike some other painting
primers, this one has no traceable outlines, but each project
features a small tonal pencil sketch which you need to replicate
the basic outline of. How straightforward this is depends
upon your drawing skills and I found it would be a good thing
if it was larger, as seeing all the detail in it is not easy
and the first stage showing the sketch on paper is very faint.
Subjects include a lonely farm track, barges on the mud, a
village street, an Oxford college, old cannon still life and
a portrait. The portrait is sketched from a photograph so
gives the budding artist some practice doing this. Each project
has a few similar paintings as examples with short captions
about their execution. If you want to try your hand at painting
watercolors, this is a good place to start, particularly due
to the sensible advice on what to buy (and what not to).
If you cannot find a good range of watercolor painting materials
locally, try www.searchpress.com for a list of suppliers.
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