Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Watercolor

Imagine an art school where more than 15 popular watercolorists teach, and you've imagined Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Watercolor, a full-to-the-brim 400-page anthology of Watson-Guptill's finest watercolor instruction from recent best-selling authors. This treasure trove reviews the tools and materials of watercolor, then proceeds with the color palette, color mixing, and applied color theory. The full range of painting techniques is presented—the fundamentals of brushwork, laying in a simple wash, working wet-in-wet, drybrushing, masking, pouring, scratching, glazing, and more—as well as techniques for achieving various textures like tree bark and grass.

Unconventional approaches such as painting with sand, collaging, and monoprinting are also covered. Different artists explain how to understand and work effectively with value, form, light, and shadow, as well as how to achieve good design and composition. The basics of perspective are also explained. The book includes sections on specific painting subjects, many with detailed step-by-step sequences. Some are based on working from photographs and sketches, others on painting on location and from live models. There are demonstrations of how to paint landscapes, figures, and flowers. Each lesson focuses on a particular technique or artistic principle, such as “Underpainting to Capture a Certain Time of Day” and “Linking Basic Shapes to Build Your Painting.”

All in all, for breadth and variety in both teaching and painting styles, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Watercolor, is the best value in watercolor instruction available today.

Marian Appelof is a senior editor at Watson-Guptill Publications.