From beautifully dynamic leaves, flowers, and trees to simple geometric shapes and patterns, Modern Watercolor provides a colorful and fun approach to working with watercolor. It’s time to get your feet wet with watercolors! This dynamic and inspirational guide will set you down a path of exploration as you learn to play with watercolors. Learn to use basic techniques and principles to create beautiful, expressive works of art. With Modern Watercolor, discover how to paint in watercolor by harnessing the medium's unique transparent qualities to create stunning works of art, stationery, gifts, and more. From selecting your first watercolor paints to learning to blend colors into a unique palette, we are here to guide you as you begin your journey. By the end, your paintings will be cohesive and rich. The easy-to-follow lessons explore using watercolor on different surfaces, how to create basic shapes using fun techniques, and how to create myriad gorgeous effects that can be achieved with different brushes and strokes. You can even learn how to add layers of dimension and texture, as well as how to work with resist techniques to create pretty patterns and gorgeous backgrounds. Whether you're an experienced artist seeking a playful escape or a beginner who has never held a paintbrush, there's something for everyone in Modern Watercolor.

Unwind and get creative as you learn all about watercolor painting--one of the fastest-growing activities for everyday adults who are looking for a hobby to easily relax and relieve stress! Modern Watercolor Botanicals is a comprehensive guide for all skill levels--beginner to advanced--that teaches everything you need to know about watercolor using easy-to-follow diagrams, pictures, and instructions. Learn how to paint and advance your skills using pieces of beautiful, traceable artwork, including detailed wildflowers, shade tropical leaves, eucalyptus wreaths, and more. Lessons in Modern Watercolor Botanicals include: • Instructions for every skill level: beginner, intermediate, and advanced • Easy-to-follow diagrams, pictures, and instructions • Each lesson builds upon skills learned in the previous lessons • 15 pieces of traceable artwork to paint, no drawing experience required! • Lessons that promote focus and mindfulness and help you reduce stress through the enjoyment of the artistic process • All you need to know to create frame-worthy masterpieces and thoughtful gifts • Prompts, challenges, and ideas to take your creativity to the next level Author Sarah Simon (@themintgardener), a Seattle-based artist who leads sold-out watercolor workshops across the U.S., shares everything she teaches her students in this book. She also answers some of the most common questions from watercolor artists at all levels: • What tools do I need? • How do I mix interesting colors? • How do I create shape, movement, and definition in my piece? • How do I find my own creative style? Delve into Modern Watercolor Botanicals to develop your skills and form your own unique artistic approach to the world of modern watercolor!

Enjoy the meditative art of watercolor with simple supplies, forty colorful illustrated lessons, and easy step-by-step instructions! For a soothing boost of creativity and whimsy, try your hand at watercolor. With a few simple steps, anyone can discover their artistic side and achieve moments of peace and tranquility. Forty straightforward lessons promise fun and colorful results -- no pressure and no skill required. This simple painting medium produces colorful, modern paintings to adorn invitations, gifts, and walls. The forty lessons cover useful topics like: Painting on vacation Painting your pets Layering colors Mixing colors Painting flowers and plants The supplies are simple: a basic palette of watercolors, a selection of brushes, and nice thick paper will do the job. Your bright, whimsical art is guaranteed to bring color to any gray day. It's never too late to pick up a new hobby -- start painting your own beautiful cards and artwork today!

The fascinating story of the transformation of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925 The formation of the American Watercolor Society in 1866 by a small, dedicated group of painters transformed the perception of what had long been considered a marginal medium. Artists of all ages, styles, and backgrounds took up watercolor in the 1870s, inspiring younger generations of impressionists and modernists. By the 1920s many would claim it as "the American medium." This engaging and comprehensive book tells the definitive story of the metamorphosis of American watercolor practice between 1866 and 1925, identifying the artist constituencies and social forces that drove the new popularity of the medium. The major artists of the movement - Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, William Trost Richards, Thomas Moran, Thomas Eakins, Charles Prendergast, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, Charles Demuth, and many others - are represented with lavish color illustrations. The result is a fresh and beautiful look at watercolor's central place in American art and culture.

A fascinating and novel exploration of the transformative role played by the American West in the development of modernism in the United States Drawing extensively from various disciplines including ethnology, geography, geology, and environmental studies, this groundbreaking book addresses shifting concepts of time, history, and landscape in relation to the work of pioneering American artists during the first half of the 20th century. Paintings, watercolors, and photographs by renowned artists such as Frederic Remington, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Thomas Hart Benton, Dorothea Lange, and Jackson Pollock are considered alongside American Indian ledger drawings, tempuras, and Dineh sandpaintings. Taken together, these works document the quest to create a specifically American art in the decades prior to World War II. The Modern West begins with a captivating meditation on the relationship between human culture and the physical landscape by Barry Lopez, who traveled the West in the artists' footsteps. Emily Ballew Neff then describes the evolving importance of the West for American artists working out a radically new aesthetic response to space and place, from artist-explorers on the turn-of-the-century frontier, to visionaries of a Californian arcadia, to desert luminaries who found in its stark topography a natural equivalent to abstraction. Beautifully illustrated and handsomely designed, this book is essential to anyone interested in the West and the history of modernism in American art.

This addition to the Artist's Studio series gives artists of all skill levels a current look at tools and techniques in the world of watercolor. From selecting brushes and paper to experimenting with a variety of mediums, readers can discover all they need to know to build their library of materials and start painting right away. To inspire creativity, the book highlights products that affect the consistency, sheen, and texture of the paint, including iridescent medium and impasto gel. Also, the book features world-renowned art materials brand Winsor & Newton, introducing artists to a broad range of high-quality products that are easy to find in any art & craft store.

Learn to use colored pencils and watercolor pencils to create vibrant, exciting works of art! Modern Colored Pencil delves into all the basic techniques and concepts required to create fresh, colorful works of colored pencil art. Talented artist Chelsea Ward takes you on a lively, easy-to-follow exploration of colored pencils in this book, which is packed with creative exercises and projects designed to show you how to work with the versatile, approachable colored pencil medium. The Modern series of books offers a fun, contemporary approach to working with traditional art media, demonstrating that with the right type of instruction, encouragement, and tips, drawing and painting success can be achieved by any artist or creative type. Modern Colored Pencil begins with a brief introduction to various tools, such as pencils (including colored pencils, graphite pencils, and watercolor pencils), papers, and other tools. This handy book also demonstrates often-complicated concepts, such as color mixing, shading, texture, and more, in an easy, approachable manner. Once you have a handle on the basics, explore how to create dynamic color palettes, use basic shapes and techniques to render a range of subjects, and create various marks and textures. From beautiful florals and nature motifs to animals and everyday items, Modern Colored Pencil provides a fresh, contemporary, and enjoyable approach to learning how to create vivid artwork in colored pencil.