The Watercolour Companion: Techniques & Tips to Improve Your Painting

Description

Let this innovative and indispensable book be your painting companion: simply dip in and out whenever you need advice and guidance from best-selling author, Matthew Palmer. Start with watercolour basics and learn to plan successful pictures, then select expert guidance, tips for success, and beginner-friendly troubleshooting from within the sections on flowers, trees, buildings, water, people and wildlife. Discover how to make your moonlit sky really glow; learn how to paint lush, realistic foliage; add believable figures; and create driving rain and sparkling water. Unique to this book are Matthew's key mix swatches. These allow you to achieve perfect results every time; explaining the colours you need and in what proportion. The paint mix is shown both wet and dry, so you can compare your palette with the wet mix, and know what it'll look like once applied. The dry swatches stretch to the edge of the page, so you can also simply hold the book up to the object you're painting, find a colour match and create the right mix with ease. The book also includes a pull-out picture finder, which will help you create the best composition from the scene in front of you, isolate and identify a colour, try different picture formats and help with proportion and size. Designed to aid you whilst painting either indoors or out, the small format and hard cover make the book easy to transport and to store with the rest of your painting kit.

Matthew Palmer is a renowned demonstrator of watercolour painting, and his classes are particularly popular with beginners. He is also a best-selling author, with over 110,000 copies sold. He has been painting seriously for over 20 years and specializes in landscapes, still life and animals. He has his own studio at his home in Derbyshire, UK and teaches hundreds of people each week, as well as running watercolour workshops and holidays. He has many personal exhibitions, participates in several art shows and appears regularly on television as well as on his own internet-based art show at www.watercolour.tv

It's always a good sign when a book feels welcoming before you even get to the content. This small-format hardback fits nicely in the hand and has just enough heft to make you feel that it's taking both you and its subject seriously. An elastic closure betokens a vade mecum that'll accompany you everywhere. But enough of the form, what of the function? At heart, this is basically a hints and tips book. There are plenty of basic ideas, simply presented, for handling a variety of subjects: trees, flowers, animals, buildings, water - the usual gamut - as well as technical matters such as colour selection and mixing, which are handled rather well. A handy viewfinder is included too. -- Henry Malt * The Artist * A very handy book packed with information, but small enough to take out with you or to refer to in the studio. The mixing proportions are useful and explained very clearly. The pull out picture finder has handy proportional rulers for estimating distance. Matthew Palmer is a good teacher and explains everything well. -- Lynn Woodcock * Amazon Customer Review *