Everyone can draw and paint, including you! Even if you have never drawn or painted before, you can start creating your own beautiful artwork. Let the Willenbrinks show you how! Beginning with materials and basic techniques, these pages will teach you everything you need to know to get started in drawing, watercolors and oil painting. Follow along with 75+ demonstrations and mini-demonstrations as you learn how to draw and paint a wide variety of subjects: people, landscapes, buildings, still life and more. Every essential art topic is covered, from sketching and shading to composition and color. Simple step-by-step instruction and many enormously useful lessons and tips will have you making your own masterpieces in no time! You may be an absolute beginner, but great results are absolutely within reach!

An introduction to watercolor painting that discusses supplies and brush strokes and demonstrates techniques, showing what to do and what not to do; covers values, skies, still life, and painting on location.

Open this book as an absolute beginner, and come away as a proud portrait artist. Mark and Mary Willenbrink's Absolute Beginner books have helped thousands of novices tap into their inner artists. In this book, Mark and Mary help the beginning artist take on portraits, showing that absolutely anyone can draw faces. Their encouraging, easy-to-follow instruction style makes learning fun—you'll be amazed by how quickly you achieve impressive results. Drawing Portraits for the Absolute Beginner covers everything from warming up with sketches, and capturing facial expressions, to framing your finished work. Page by page, you'll build the skills and confidence you need to draw lifelike portraits of your friends and family. What's Inside: • A simple two-stage approach to drawing portraits: sketch a likeness, then build up values to bring it to life • Step-by-step instruction for drawing eyes, noses, mouths, hairstyles, hands, glasses and other tricky elements • 13 complete demonstrations featuring a range of ages and ethnicities • Tips for evoking more personality in your portraits by using props, costumes and accessories

Have you ever been amazed by watercolor paintings that seem to spring to life before your eyes? Would you love to be able to paint with watercolors? Now, you can. Watercolor Painting For Dummies shows you the fun and easy way to create breathtaking paintings so beautiful you won’t believe you made them yourself. This friendly, guide gives you hands-on instruction and easy-to-follow, step-by-step exercises to help you master the basics. Filled with full-color projects and sample paintings, it shows you how to work with color and texture, practice composition, and make smooth changes. You’ll find out how to select the best tools, materials, and supplies, practice basic brush strokes, and use the three best common techniques: flat wash, graded wash, and rough texture. Discover how to: Select the right brushes, pigments, and paper Mix colors and work with white Create backgrounds and foregrounds Transfer your drawings to watercolor Avoid common watercolor mistakes Experiment with texture using salt, sponges, plastic wrap, and more Find your way around the color wheel Practice the principles of design Plan compositions using thumbnails Work with one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective Paint fabrics, shiny surfaces, and organic textures Paint landscapes, seascapes, animals and more Complete with strategies for improving your painting immediately and marketing and selling your work, Watercolor Painting For Dummies, is the resource you need to make your creative dreams come true.

Bestselling artist and writer Hazel Soan has distilled her art teaching into the things that matter most and can be digested in a short period of time – in just one afternoon you can start painting. Learning to paint is one of the life-long aspirations of many of us, and these techniques can be picked up faster than you think. Hazel Soan's concise book, filled with easy-to-follow instructions and step-by-step exercises, is written in an accessible way for those completely new to painting. Chapters include: Getting Started (the materials you will need and those you can ignore in the art shop); Choice of Colours; Mixing Colours; What's the Subject?; What Surfaces to Paint on; Basic Painting Techniques; Brushstrokes and Composition (with details on how to design paintings with horizon, focus and balance, a hint of perspective and the light and shade of a subject). Packed with illustrations for guidance, this is the most comprehensive guide to learning watercolour very quickly.

Discover the limitless possibilities of pastels with this beginner’s guide to creating modern, lively, and colorful pastel artwork. Artist and teacher Rebecca de Mendoça offers beginners a complete course in using pastels. Step-by-step exercises and longer projects help you to build the essential skills you need to paint a range of subjects, including landscapes, still life, portraits, and animals. Vital drawing techniques are explained and demonstrated, along with easy-to-follow explanations of color theory, composition, and the pastels themselves. This volume includes techniques for using both hard and soft pastels, eight skill-building projects, and a wealth of finished artwork to provide ideas and inspiration.