Watercolor is a magical and often challenging medium. Once mastered, it will reward you with the pleasure of creating striking works of art of infinite variety. This book is a culmination of many years of teaching. Through it, I set out to clear up widespread misconceptions about painting with watercolors. These common confusions hold watercolor artists back from achieving their full potential. Full of practical advice and techniques, my aim is to simplify watercolor painting to assist you in your personal watercolor adventure. Enjoy the journey!

Watercolor is a magical and often challenging medium. Once mastered, it will reward you with the pleasure of creating striking works of art of infinite variety.This book is a culmination of many years of teaching. Through it, I set out to clear up widespread misconceptions about painting with watercolors. These common confusions hold watercolor artists back from achieving their full potential.Full of practical advice and techniques, my aim is to simplify watercolor painting to assist you in your personal watercolor adventure. Enjoy the journey!

The beauty of a watercolor painting lies in its diaphanous layers, delicate strokes, and luminous washes. However, the very features that define the beauty of the medium can make it difficult to master. This complete guide to understanding the relationships between color, value, wetness, and composition unravels the mysteries of watercolor to help your practice evolve. Experienced teacher and acclaimed artist Tom Hoffmann offers a unique, inquiry-based approach that shows you how to translate any subject into the language of watercolor. With Hoffmann as your guide, you’ll learn the key questions to ask yourself at every turn and time-tested methods to help you reach solutions. Hoffmann’s thorough explanations and step-by-step demonstrations delineate the process of composing a painting in watercolor, while art from more than thirty-five past and present masters, including John Singer Sargent, Ogden Pleissner, George Post, Emil Kosa, Jr., Mary Whyte, Trevor Chamberlain, Lars Lerin, Torgeir Schjølberg, Piet Lap, Leslie Frontz, and Alvaro Castagnet serve to illustrate and inspire. Whether you’re a serious beginner or a seasoned practitioner, this book will guide you toward the all-important balance between restraint and risk-taking that every watercolorist seeks.

Thanks to overwhelmingly positive responses to the demonstrations in my first book "Mastering Watercolors - a practical guide," I've created this 124-page manual of how-to demos. Here you'll find twelve new step-by-step paintings with reference photos and plenty of images to guide you through each piece. I've also included a section on watercolor basics and materials (11 pages) similar to what was in my first book for people who have not read it. An additional chapter covers what to consider when working from photographs. An ideal follow-on from "Mastering Watercolors - a practical guide," this book is especially suited to people who can't attend regular classes with a professional tutor. Watercolor is wonderful and challenging medium which, like most creative pursuits, develops with regular practice. Happy painting! Joe Cartwright

The watercolor clock shows artists how to manipulate watercolor materials for dazzling, atmospheric effects.

Learn to create any color from a basic palette of just 11 colors!

What if you could create any color you wanted, from a basic palette of just 11 colors? That is what the art of color mixing is all about. And once you master it, you will be able to create a broad range of all the colors you might need. Your options will be limited only by your imagination.

In this color mixing book, Isabelle Roelofs and Fabien Petillion first walk you step by step through the basics of watercolor pigments, paper, and color mixing techniques. Using just 11 colors, you’ll learn to bring more variety to your primary colors, create basic colors (such as Payne’s Gray and Van Dyke Brown), and create your own secondary colors. This approach works no matter what brand of paints you use, as each of the 11 colors is identified by its universal pigment color (such as PY154).

Once you’re underway color mixing, you’ll see how four artists interpret that basic palette to create thematic color palettes tailored to different subject matter, such as flowers, landscapes, portraits, and animals. Finally, you’ll solidify your understanding of color mixing by analyzing five watercolor paintings to see how the color was achieved and how the painting was developed, layer by layer, to achieve the final result.