No matter what medium you are working in, you can create paintings that are interesting to your viewer. Popular painter and instructor Tony Couch shows you how! Tony Couch maintains that the key to producing credible work lies within the mastery of two basic skills: drawing and design. There are only a few simple principles of design at the foundation of any successful painting, and Tony Couch demonstrates how you can apply these principles to create visually appealing paintings. Once you begin to understand and use the principles taught in this book, you can consciously incorporate them into your work. You'll learn to make your paintings interesting through color harmony, repetition, balance, and dominance, but at the same time create visual appeal through variety, contrast, and gradation. Tony Couch's Keys to Successful Painting breaks down the fundamentals of painting design. Couch demonstrates how to arrange shapes, size, lines, color, and values to create stunning compositions. Because Tony Couch reduces design to a few rules applied to a limited number of elements, you'll find his ideas easy to remember. The sheer number of paintings included here that illustrate these principles allow you to see how they work in practice. Painters of all mediums can create unforgettable works with Tony Couch's invaluable design advice. Tony Couch received his bachelor's degree from the University of Tampa and studied with Edgar A. Whitney at the Pratt Institute in New York City. During a 31-year career as a commercial airline pilot, Couch advanced his watercolor painting skills at workshops with Ed Whitney, Milford Zornes, Robert E. Wood, Zoltan Szabo, and others. He has written articles on watercolor instruction for North Light, American Artist, and Palette Talk, and has produced a popular series of videos on watercolor painting. He teaches watercolor workshops worldwide and has won over 50 awards. Couch maintains membership to a number of art societies and is also the author of Watercolor: You Can Do It and Watercolor Techniques.

A complete watercolor instruction guide, this long-time bestseller is full of vibrant illustrations, examples of what to do and what to avoid, and tips that make the medium accessible. Written by a true master, it presents practical information on the basics of setting up a good painting — composition, color, and light — before discussing the medium's advantages and concluding with informative demonstrations. Tony Couch emphasizes practice as the key to developing watercolor skills. Starting with equipment choices and methods for controlling paint on wet paper, he proceeds to discussions and illustrations of the elements and principles of design. Other topics include working with color and value, pulling together a composition, and acquiring techniques for handling watercolor. Easy-to-follow examples chart the progress from a rough sketch into a finished painting. Watercolor: You Can Do It! is an ideal companion for beginning to advanced artists, suitable for individual study as well as a text for art students and teachers.

Introduces watercolor materials and methods, and provides step-by-step demonstrations of landscape painting that focus on various aspects of nature, including trees, rocks, water, and snow

Brilliant guide by renowned artist tells all, from basics to creating masterful landscapes, portraits, and figures. Full-color sections follow evolution of seven of the author's own watercolors. 37 color and over 100 black-and-white illustrations.

Create art that's more attractive, interesting and eye-catching! Even if your perspective is accurate, your subject realistic and colors vibrant, a weak composition - predictable, repetitious or monotonous - means a weak painting. The Simple Secret to Better Painting ensures that your compositions work every time. It's an insightful artistic philosophy that boils down the many technical principles of composition into a single master rule that's easy to remember and apply: Never make any two intervals the same. You can make every painting more interesting, dynamic and technically sound by varying intervals of distance, length and space, as well as intervals of value and color. The rule also applies to balance, shape and the location of your painting's focal point. Greg Albert illustrates these lessons with eye-opening examples from both beginning and professional artists, including Frank Webb, Tony Couch, Kevin Macpherson, Charles Reid, Tony Van Hasselt and more. You'll discover that the ONE RULE is the only rule of composition you need to immediately improve your work - the moment your brush touches the canvas.

A unique system for jump-starting artistic creativity, encouraging experimentation and growth, and increasing sales for artists of all levels, from novices to professionals. Have you landed in a frustrating rut? Are you having trouble selling paintings in galleries, getting bogged down by projects you can’t seem to finish or abandon, or finding excuses to avoid working in the studio? Author Carol Marine knows exactly how you feel—she herself suffered from painter’s block, until she discovered “daily painting.” The idea is simple: do art (usually small) often (how often is up to you), and if you’d like, post and sell it online. Soon you’ll find that your block dissolves and you’re painting work you love—and more of it than you ever thought possible! With her encouraging tone and useful exercises, Marine teaches you to: -Master composition and value -Become confident in any medium including oil painting, acrylic painting, watercolors, and other media -Choose subjects wisely -Stay fresh and loose -Photograph, post, and sell your art online -Become connected to the growing movement of daily painters around the world

Step-by-step examples show you dozens of ways to make your watercolors better including: changing tonal values, clarifying your focal point, using interesting shapes, and adding figures.