Cover Image: Painting: Watercolor Basics

Painting: Watercolor Basics

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Member Reviews

Great reference book with information on materials and techniques. Good for any level of skill, from novice to more experienced painters.

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Another great job by this author.

Painting: Watercolor Basics has detailed tips and instructions which are easy to follow. It's a great book for beginners and anyone really who wants a refresher course on painting with watercolors.

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I don't know if I would call the techniques on this book "basics" but it has great content nonetheless! It covers a lot of tips and tricks to make your watercolor paintings more realistic and add more depth, and I thoroughly enjoyed following along. Great book for watercolor enthusiasts! Though I would not recommend it for beginners.

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This short book is well done. Art books have to be pretty focused, and this one does a good job on its focus, which is a few basic techniques. Good images and examples. Nice tips are included.

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Just a beautiful medium to work with. One of the harder mediums as well in my opinion. The author beautifully describes the application of watercolor painting with excellent examples.

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Excellent, easy to follow instructions and techniques in watercolor. The author goes through in detail from beginning to end how to compose and paint a watercolor painting.

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I tried reading this book and practicing along with it and turns out, I've been doing it wrong all this time. This book is an absolute gem. The illustrations are really cool and it covers many aspects of water coloring. I especially loved the snow scenery painting and the bird painting. The detailed explanations and step-by-step guidance are really helpful. I never even knew about masking fluid and it's not even available around here but I'm still glad for being introduced to it.

I did feel there could have been a bit more on how water coloring works so we could get the gist of it better, but I'm also totally satisfied. Deb Watson's how-to books would always be my go-to for anything art-related.

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A very good watercolor basics and exercise book, although it's a little short.

Thank you NetGalley for this opportunity.

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I selected this book to read and review as I have tried water color on my own a couple of times and have never liked my results. I am not a professional or even a great artist, it is definitely a hobby that I enjoy that is just for me. However, I would like to be better at it so I thought I would give this book a try and I am so very glad I did. The colorful pages coupled with the step by step instructions of how to recreate the pictures being taught in the book have renewed my desire to play with watercolor again. I actually want to purchase a physical copy of this book as I think that will help me even more so I can spend more time practicing the steps that the author takes us through. All in all, I think this is a very good book for beginners like me and I highly recommend it.

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This is an attractive book to help individuals learn the art of watercolor painting. The images and diagrams provide visual cues that are supported by the text instructions. The art is beautifully presented. The tools and techniques are well described and helpful to a novice painter or to refresh knowledge. Recommended to public and creative support libraries.

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Projects with looking at certain points of the painting done to the final painting instead of a step by step. Reader does get some lead up information to the projects like tools, selecting mixes and tips on how the painting was done.

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This is a short book, but effective. It has a few projects, but they are presented step by step and in depth, helpful for beginners. I really enjoyed it and also learned a lot!

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Sadly cant load it to my kindle. It would had been more helpful in my hobby of art. Still a thumbs up.

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A Booklet for Advanced Beginners
With "Painting: Watercolor Basics. Master the Art of Painting in Watercolor (How to draw & Paint)" published by Quarto Publishing Group - Walter foster the award-winning and self-taught artist Deb Watson offers a guide for beginners who are interested in watercolor. The 40-page booklet offers a brief introduction into tools and materials before presenting six projects (Creating the Illusion of Depth, Evoking Mood, Adding Interest, Creating Texture with Salt & Masking, Capturing Essential Details, and Rendering Soft Edges). The author lists for every project which colors are needed, how to mix various colors to get new ones, some instruction how to proceed (e.g., how to use masking fluid), and some tips. She shows the most important steps at the hand of progressing pictures in order that the learner can arrive at the final one.
This was my first book created by Deb Watson and also the first one of this "How to Draw & Paint" series by Walter Foster Art Books. I liked the approach of the book and the high-quality pictures (even in the digital advance copy), but I think that the projects might be to challenging for true beginners who are working by themselves. The booklet lacks some basic information, e.g., about the color wheel, wet-on-wet painting, wet-on-dry painting, which brushes to use for which project or step of the project and there is no explanation of the terminology. I would not recommend the booklet for true beginners, but it might be a help for beginners that have already some knowledge about watercolor painting.
The booklet seems to be a revised and slightly expanded version (40 pages instead of 32 pages) of "Watercolor: Basics: Discover the secrets of painting beautiful works of art in this luminous medium (How to Draw & Paint) by the same author which was published by Walter Foster Publishing in 2014.
The complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley free of charge. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
#PaintingWatercolorBasics #NetGalley

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Thank you to the publisher, the author and NetGalley for granting me an advanced digital copy. This review is given voluntarily.

Chapters include: tools and materials, creating the illusion of depth, evoking mood, adding interest, creating texture with salt and masking, capturing essential details, rendering soft edges.

It is definitely a book for beginners, as it reads completely step by step. The reader needs to read through the entire tutorial to get the broader picture of what's going to happen. The author did not tell you why you were doing something before you are doing it.

The steps are explained in paragraphs and might make a beginner feel like they're missing something. There are a few words from the painting lexicon that a complete beginner might not have automaticity with yet, such as foreground, wet-on-wet, "graded wash off color." However, I understand the situation must have been limited on number of pages and teaching those words might not have been in the scope.

The color mixing recommendations are extremely helpful.

The tutorial includes many little tips about how to make the final product that little bit much better. The expertise is apparent. I would recommend this to an adult who has tried other types of painting (perhaps even watercolor) and who wants the basics before taking an in person class.

The book mostly does what it aims to do, it might have just needed a little more structure.

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This book teaches you watercolour techniques through fairly detailed projects. The selection of studies is good, I especially liked the landscape, and the bird. There is enough instruction and step by step pictures for a beginner to have a go at. Overall a lovely book with a good variety of projects and techniques to learn.

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This book teaches you how to start painting with water colors step by step. It's really helpful but I felt like it was a bit short on the example side. Most probably because it's about basics rather than improvement.

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Lovely little book that introduces the reader to watercolor technique with simple projects: ladybug, winter landscape, portrait, some animals and the beautiful flowers on the cover. Interesting the use of white ink.

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As a beginner in watercolour painting, this book is really helpful. It isn't a big book but the examples and instructions are extremely easy to follow and well illustrated.
A great book for picking up basic skills in watercolour.

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Watercoloring is one of my favourites techniques and this book was absolutely lovely.
Right away I have to say that I would not call it basics, it seemed that it rather gave tips on how to make your painting very real rather than teaching the basics of watercoloring.

Anyway, I'm excited to try some of the things that were shown, especially how to use shadows and how to create depth.

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