Member Reviews

Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators is a more advanced work about composition. It is recommended for artists who understand how watercolors work and want to learn more basic painting techniques to improve their skills.

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Beautiful watercolour guide, such a wonderful assortment of techniques. I really enjoyed the tips provided in this book!

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This is the first and only book you will need to get started with watercolor. For both beginners and experts alike, this has it all. Stop copying watercolor designs from Instagram and start creating your own style!

Thank you to NetGalley and DK for this advance readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

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So many awesome techniques in this book. I bought a hard copy for myself and 2 more for Christmas gifts.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

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This is a very detailed, fun book on watercolour techniques that includes many different projects/examples. Very well organized and the layout is great, the book is very comprehensive and stands at 256 pages. A great book for anyone from newbies to professional artists!

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I really love the look of water color on paper. Excited to read this book and understand the techniques. The book provided good instructions. I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

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This is a very informative guidebook to watercoloring. It's filled with great step-by-step details on watercolor techinques. It's a perfect source for a beginner like me.

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This book has a great deal of information relevant to the world of watercoloring.
The book goes over basics and also an introduction to advanced painting.
There is a section on basic drawing, how to sketch out the design.
Watercolor is one of the most challenging mediums for most people.
Using the techniques this book introduces will help you to hone into skills.

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Great book! I love watercolor but I'm still a beginner. This books teaches you everything you need to know about watercolor and all the techniques for beginners, intermediates and advancers. I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

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This book covered watercolor techniques and tips from beginner to advanced level. They also covered a variety of styles of painting (realistic, abstract, etc.) as well as a variety of subjects (landscape, portrait, etc.). Each technique had some instruction and tips on how to do it, but the main part was a step-by-step project for each technique. This project used the new technique and some previous techniques, and the basic projects were much simpler than the more advanced ones (later in the book). Some of these projects were step-by-step instructions (use this color and this technique to get this result) while other projects were more tips of what to think about or look for in that step (mostly in the advanced section).

The focus was solely on watercolor, but they assumed that you could draw very well when it came to the advanced projects. For example, you draw the profile of a person for step one in the portrait "technique" project. The rest of the steps were loosely filling in certain parts of the drawing with watercolor. They did a good job of describing the techniques, providing tips, and choosing interesting projects. Overall, I recommend this book to beginners and intermediate watercolor artists.

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This is a comprehensive book that goes into lots of detail about watercolor materials, techniques and more. It shows a wide variety of styles and walks you through the steps to complete a host of watercolor paintings, covering topics like perspective, ratios, resist techniques and more. It's definitely for the serious artist and features beautiful watercolor paintings and tutorials from a range of gifted artists.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.

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Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House Publishers for the opportunity to read and give an honest review of this book.

What a great resource for the watercolor artist! This book covers it all from the basics on materials to concepts like color and perspective. It doesn’t dwell overly long on any one thing or belabor the point.
What a refreshing concept.

As a watercolor artist at an intermediate level, I continue to learn, absorb ideas, and practice, practice, practice. This book covered aspects of landscape, portrait and botanical watercolor painting.
This makes it practical for all artists regardless of their particular style or subject matter. It also included, abstract as well as patterned painting. It touched on other types of watercolor besides cakes and tubes, such as watercolor crayons and pencils. There was a section on correcting common mistakes as well.

The step by step instructions would be very helpful for the beginner. However, as an indexed reference it would be very appropriate for the experienced or professional artist to have in their own reference art library.

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This book is beautiful and filled with so much color. The pros of "Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators" include: different techniques to enhance and create for each level of artist from beginner to advanced; illustrations and near step-by-steps on how to recreate certain works; and techniques that can be reapplied to create your own works. This book also provides "art theory" where you are shown basics such as lines, focal points, shadowing, etc. All that said, I have rated this book three stars because I no absolutely nothing about watercolor painting (I am very familiar with acrylic paints), and while I know considerably more than I did before, I still feel the need to supplement this book with some kind of video instruction/class as I do not feel equipped with the knowledge of how exactly to start painting. There are instructions - such as stretching, wetting the paper and the book provides a basic outline of wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry painting, but it is almost as if you are reading cliff notes on these parts. As a beginner I would have wanted a more thorough overview, but I also understand this book is geared at all levels and not just beginners.

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Nice Guide of Watercolor Techniques

If you are already good at drawing or illustration, this book could either introduce you to watercolor techniques or help you practice the skills you already have. Watercolor can be so evocative. It can be exceedingly realistic or have a dreamlike quality... or be anything in between. It can be vibrant or muted. There is a lot of latitude with the medium, and it has special effects that can be only done with it. This book offers a sequential path of learning to provide or deepen watercolor skills.

The book starts with the basics, going over types of paint, brushes, and paper, as well as more generalized art knowledge like color theory, composition, and perspective. The biggest part of the book is the section on techniques, divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced techniques. Beginner techniques include wet-on-dry and wet-on-wet techniques as well as flat, graduated, or variegated washes. Intermediate techniques go further into more complex washes, like granulated or separated. It looks at how to do highlights and work with negative space. The advanced techniques section looks at simplifying what you see, linear perspective, and using other mediums like charcoal or watercolor pencils and pens. The third section moves beyond techniques to the actual subjects that might be painted: landscapes, still life and flowers, and finally portraits, figures, and animals. As you can tell, this goes over a fair amount of information and techniques.

Each technique page has one drawing broken down, showing how it was done layer by layer. If you are an artist or illustrator with an interest in watercolor, you may very well find this book to be useful for you.

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I have not used water colour in ages but this did remind me of techniques I for got and showed me new one . It did get me using watercolour again.

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This is the comprehensive book on watercolor that I've been looking for! It is extremely thorough for any level of expertise; all artists can find value within these pages. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the watercolor medium and will absolutely be obtaining a copy to reference!

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Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators is a really solid reference for artists. I was impressed by how comprehensive it is.

This book covers a larger range of styles and levels of difficulty and the flow and layout of the book is visually pleasing, clear and easy to follow.

This is fantastic because beginners can select an easier project and move on to more advanced projects as they feel more confident. The more advanced artists have a wealth of information to improve and expand on techniques, a list of what tools are useful or even just a fantastic source of inspiration.

I feel this book would make a fantastic gift for any artist interested in watercolor. I just loved it and I can’t recommend it enough.

I received this book from NetGalley for an honest review.

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If you've ever wanted to get into watercolor painting, this is the book for you. It is the most comprehensive and complete book I've seen on the subject.

It starts with the basics: the tools, color theory&mixing and how to apply the paint. How to observe your subject. Basics of drawing and perspective and planning.

And then it gets into techniques which have a beginner, intermediate and advanced section. Tons and tons of techniques in this book. You can practice one daily or weekly and won't run out for a long, long time.

And my favorite section is all the subjects. From people to pets to cityscapes to abstract to everything in between, this book doesn't spare anything. It has examples, tips, advice and techniques for any subject. It has absolutely beautiful paintings and it makes you want to drop all you're doing and pull out your watercolors.

I cannot recommend it enough.

With gratitude to netgalley and DK for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators is exactly what I look for in a how-to art book. The sheer volume of technical detail it goes into is impressive. The art fulfills a full range of style and complexity. The visual layout is clear and easy to follow. Beginners will be able to pick simpler projects and build on them as they develop their skills. Experienced artists will have a one-stop compendium of tools, techniques and sources of inspiration. My one frustration right now is that I don't have a physical copy to dig in right away with the projects, so now I know what I getting myself for my birthday: this book.

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This is an awesome book on watercolor techniques, whether you are a newbie or advanced. It includes in-depth info on the basics, including tools, many types of skills, techniques, information on color, color theory, mixing colors, and palettes. Beautiful photos throughout the book. Detailed instructions. Breathtaking. A must- have for anyone interested in watercolor, even if just as a hobby.

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