Creative Watercolor offers beginners a fun, modern, and practical approach to a timeless medium with instructions on how to paint simple motifs and lettering and embellish projects beautifully. In Creative Watercolor, popular watercolor artist and workshop instructor Ana Victoria Calderon shares her step-by-step techniques for painting modern motifs in this classic medium. Through a series of easy tutorials and projects, you will: Get an overview of basic materials and tools, plus options for embellishing your paintings Master essential techniques, starting with easy warm-up activities, learning to layer, and getting into the flow with watercolor, plus an introduction to scanning and digital editing for making multiples Learn to paint a variety of simple, beautiful motifs: flowers and leaves, butterflies and critters, fruits and vegetables, and delightful lettering Use what you've learned to create unique, stylish stationery, including beautiful invitations, place cards, menus, monograms, recipe gift cards, thank you notes—any project you can imagine, for any kind of event you can think of! There's never been a better time to dive into the world of watercolor, so why wait? Grab a brush and get painting! Perfect for creative beginners, the books in the Art for Modern Makers series take a fun, practical approach to learning about and working with paints and other art mediums to create beautiful DIY projects and crafts.

Welcome to your watercolor happy place! The world of Danielle Donaldson is as wondrous as a jar full of fireflies. Her whimsical illustrations are known for their offbeat color combinations, artful arrangements and endearing quirkiness. In this book, you'll learn how to partner with the wonderfully spontaneous medium of watercolor to create your own brand of magic. Start by creating a handmade journal, then follow exercises and start-to-finish projects to fill it with illustrations that are small in size but big on color. Along the way, Danielle shares her fresh takes on color theory, perspective, composition and more. Designed to get your brush moving, this book makes practice feel like play. It's a one-of-a-kind journey for any artist wishing to tap into the utter joy of watercolor painting and make it a cherished part of your daily life. Inside you'll find: • Imaginative techniques that help you override perfectionist tendencies while making the most of watercolor's unpredictable nature • An inventive approach (using scraps of paper, ribbon and other ephemera) for more creative color choices • A simple strategy that makes drawing new subjects less intimidating and more fun • Sweet ways to add hand lettering to your artwork • Inspirational exercises that make finding subjects to paint as easy as A-B-C "Don't underestimate the giddiness you feel when you mindlessly grab a color and mix it with another and create the most beautiful wash ever!" --p43

Explore and create expressive palettes and paintings with Color Harmony for Artists. Watercolor author, artist, and teacher Ana Victoria Calderon guides you through choosing, mixing, and using color with watercolor and mixed media to create the most expressive and appealing combinations and effects for a wide range of moods and subjects. You'll explore a variety of subjects and themes, including flowers, foliage, landscapes, skies, cities, figures, art movements, and historical eras. Begin with a quick overview of the basics of color, color mixing, and mixed media. Explore a variety of color and media combinations, including brilliant brights, muted neutrals, high-contrast complements, and special effects. Find inspiration in evocative photos, abundant palettes, and beautiful paintings. With Color Harmony for Artists, every artist, from beginner to advanced, will be inspired to embrace the creative possibilities of color and paint!

"Paint what you feel, not just what you see, and you'll begin to see the world in a different light." What if ...instead of waiting for the "big idea," you begin painting by dropping beautiful color onto your paper and seeing where it takes you? ...you paint with a leaf (or a sponge, or a string) instead of a brush? ...you start painting not on a blank sheet, but over an abstract acrylic background? Exploring Watercolor is a book full of fresh perspectives, open doors, and creativity-expanding "what-ifs" to help take your work to the next level. Discover new ways to get expressive with color...ideas for using nature's patterns to inspire enticing designs...how to expand your repertoire and unleash your creativity by experimenting with freeform collages, found imagery, and other innovative techniques. Inside you'll find: 22 open-ended, step-by-step demonstrations designed so you can do them over and over again, using various combinations of colors, papers, and techniques for a different result every time. 9 exercises illustrating expressive ways to put paint to paper. A fun and inspiring sampler of texture-making techniques--including print methods, resists, sprinkling, spattering, stencils, and "paper torture"--for paintings that sing with vitality. Wherever you are as an artist, this hands-on guide will help you master the watercolor medium, develop your individual style, and move beyond a literal rendering of your subject matter to a more meaningful and memorable interpretation that expresses your unique vision. So let go of your self-imposed limits, play with different ways of painting, and--above all--paint with passion and joy!

Paint beautiful and expressive portraits by combining watercolor with other mediums! What makes an eye-popping, eye-stopping portrait? It's all about contrast and the play of opposites, round shape against square, light against dark, transparent with opaque. Combining mediums allows you to push the inherent properties of each for a lively play of opposites. You'll be able to paint glorious lights, richer darks, intriguing texture and mysterious passages that create mood and a strong sense of place, space and character. Jean Pederson gives you all the advice and instruction you need to paint beautiful, expressive portraits filled with life and spirit. Let your portraits speak to the world!

A comprehensive reference guide to help you master more than 200 mixed media concepts and techniques.

Creative Gouache presents beginner tutorials for working with gouache—transparent watercolor’s opaque sister—showing how to paint bright, bold, modern effects, florals, and motifs, and combine it with other mediums.