A truly beautiful book, and a piece of art in itself. The photos are beautiful and bright and make you want to get painting immediately.

Some really great colour theory tips, using flowers as the medium, including using colour schemes, and ways to create your own colour palettes. Good, practical exercises for learning colour with the standards (colour wheels, colour mixing chart, muted and pastel colours, keeping a colour journal, and "collecting" colours). Manushree provides exact colour recipes - so helpful for a beginner or just someone wanting to try out a few new mixes.

After colour, another in depth chapter. This time on watercolour techniques. Brush control, wet-into-wet, wet-into-dry, layering and lifting.

Then there are some practical projects, where you're guided through using simple techniques with gorgeous results.

The entire book is gorgeous, practical, doable, and encouraging.

There's something so satisfying about painting. The first half of this book explains colour theory, different techniques and recommends the different tools you will need.

The second half features some guided projects you can paint yourself. The art is beautiful, I wish there was more! (However, you do need to already know how to draw the flowers as there aren't any instructions given on how to sketch them - only how to add your watercolour).

Contemporary Color Theory: Watercolor Flowers is an exquisite book. Spectacular in three areas that I found made it outstanding.

First, prep and understanding that achieving the desired color an artist might be after is achievable with the right intuition and in this case great guidance.

Second, blending can be done with an understanding of the value scale.

Third, this book is put together with such flow and nuisance that I was captivated from the beginning with the dedication to the author's mother and her use of color throughout the book and her choices of how she flowed the colors into the next.

I can imagine this book would be a beautiful addition to the collection of books for the beginner to the advanced artist. Also, would be an outstanding choice for a library collection. This book in the hands of budding artists would be a gem of a gift.

Packed with valuable information and an explanation of how to get the color of desire.

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Quarto for again another winner in my book and the opportunity to read and review Contemporary Color Theory: Watercolor Flowers by Manushree Mishra.

This is a nice introductory book for someone who wants to get started with painting flowers with watercolors. The photos are lovely, there are good tips and a nice but very basic discussion of color theory and mixing. The projects progress in a nice manner and if the reader were to follow along with them all they'd get a nice progressive set of lessons. It is definitely for a beginner however!

What a great introduction to watercolor! I have next to zero knowledge of color theory and definitely no formal training in painting or watercolor. This book made me really believe that I am capable of beautiful floral watercolor painting. The explanation of color theory is really helpful when going forward and painting. I was inspired enough to go out, get some basic supplies, and try a couple things in the book. I'm shockingly pleased by the outcome and would recommend this to anyone looking for an easy intro into watercolor!

Contemporary Color Theory: Watercolor Flowers
Author: Manushree Mishra
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What a wonderful book for beginners delving into watercolors and learning about color theory. The book is thorough and guides you through all the supplies you will need, watercolor techniques, and color theory/building color palettes. The instructions are well written and easy to understand and are accompanied by step by step photographs. The projects are lovely and really help to build up technique. I would highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to try out watercolors.

Thanks to NetGalley, Quarto Publishing Group, and Manushree Mishra for an advanced copy of the book. All thoughts in this review are my own.

Contemporary a color Theory is a fantastic book for beginners to watercolor. It has excellent well formatted information that is easy to follow and understand. I think it was very well done and would be an excellent gift for new artists!

This is a wonderful introduction to colour theory in the painting of flowers in watercolour.
For the novice and experienced artist Contemporary Colour Theory offers practical hints and tips that encourage the reader to develop their own skills in watercolour.

Again a really lovely book from Walter-Foster: contemporary color theory through watercolor flowers.
Basic foundation on color theory with innovative visual representation of the specific color combinations used on the color wheel. Various easy step by step projects, beatiful images, surely very inspiring. For beginners.

This book really covers colour theory well, and I particularly enjoyed reading the pages on creating a colour palette and seeing how different colour palette evokes different moods in the same composition. As a floral painting lover, I appreciated the detailed step-by-step projects that are simple yet graceful.

I would love to be able to paint and books like this inspire me to try. They make it look deceptively easy and straightforward. The layout of this book is great. It clearly shows you the equipment you will need and breaks down each stage of each process.

The instructions are bite sized and not at all intimidating; furthermore, they are accompanied by clear photographs to show you what you are trying to achieve. Whether an experiences painter looking to develop your skills or a newbie like me needing some encouragement, this book has it all!

I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I can't wait for our library copy to come in because I really want to try some of these easy projects found inside.

a really lovely book, lots of ideas and beautiful illustrations, as well as step-by-step instructions for fun projects!

as a beginner, this book is useful!

I am extremely grateful for this book! It's exactly what I needed as a beginner who wants to start my watercolor journey, but feels intimidated by the theory. This book is loaded with information and explains the foundation of watercoloring. Highly recommend it!

This is a lovely book. It gives one of the best descriptions of color theory that I’ve seen. It also gives great advice on mixing colors. The step by step drawings were beautiful and started out easy. My only issue is that the line drawings are shown in a tiny portion of the page and too faint. Adding line drawings in the back would easily give this book 5 stars. The first drawings were easy to follow, but the more detailed drawings need adequate line drawings. All in all, this is an excellent book.

Good book on color theory in general. It goes over some color palettes for floral work with some nice demonstrations. While well presented, it did not really offer anything that hasn't been done before.

Watercoloring Flowers by Manushree Mishra
4 Stars


This book does an excellent job of teaching color theory by using the color wheel. I enjoyed making a muted colored wheel. It was relaxing, turning off the brain and being creative. I'd recommend this book to beginners! It does a good job teaching the basics of how to mix watercolors, tools and materials and setting up composition for an artwork.

Watercoloring is definitely challenging for artists that have started out using acrylic or oil paint. For example, if you tried to mix a lighter red with acrylic paint, you would try mixing red with white, and you'll be pretty disappointed with the result if mixing watercolors similarly. This book does a good job explaining shade, tone and hue. The floral illustrations are lovely.

There are many colorful illustrations with step-by-step instructions. That said, I wasn't very happy with the step-by-step painting projects. They aren't user-friendly. There aren't any reference pictures provided for the user to draw the flowers. Even with the picture tutorials, much of the drawing process is skipped. The sketch is extremely light and the author skips over what watercoloring techniques were used to produce the project. Most beginners would be disappointed if they couldn't reproduce the art project. I've been drawing for 20-plus years and found this challenging. I'd recommend using the techniques in this book with your own reference pictures. I was much happier with my results.

Thanks, NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group, for providing me with a digital ARC for an honest review.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. (via Netgalley)

Lovely and informative. The pictures were beautiful and as a beginner I found it helpful.

Color Theory and Color Mixing applied to Flowers
Manushree Mishra is an artist, designer, and illustrator and presentes her book "Contemporary Color Theory: Watercolor Flowers. A modern exploration of the color wheel and watercolor to create beautiful floral artwork", published by Quarto Publishing Group – Walter Foster. Mishra touches topics such as "The Magical World of Color", "Colorr Temperature", "Color Harmony & Color Schemes", and "Watercolor Techniques." She talks aobut helpful tools and water control and offers tips throughout the book. Futhermore, she includes exercises such as "Creating Color Wheels", "Color Mixing Chart", and "Colors + Moods". Her step-by-step painting projects include topics such as "Eucalyptus Leaves", "Joyous Bunch", nad "English Roses in Terra-Cotta Pots."
Mishra knows about the challenges of her readers: "Have you ever struggled with mixing the exact color that you’ve imagined? Perhaps you’ve poured your heart and soul into a painting—created a good base drawing and a balanced composition—only to realize that the colors look awful together? Fret not! I know these challenges intimately, so much so that I invested a year passionately exploring color theory and mixing every tube or pan of color I owned" (p. 5). I really appreciate that she offers more than just the basic color wheel. The book can be recommended to beginners and advanced artists who are interested in more than just the basic color theory and who love to draw flowers with watercolor (although the theory can be also applied to other topics).
The complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley free of charge. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
#ContemporaryColorTheoryWatercolorFlowers #Netgalley

Contemporary Color Theory: Watercolor Flowers is a well written watercolor tutorial for botanical subjects by Manushree Mishra. Due out 5th July 2022 from Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format.

The layout follows the familiar Walter Foster tutorial format. An introduction covers tools and supplies and is followed by a short and easily accessible general watercolor tutorial and an introduction to necessary techniques and info about value, water control, pigment saturation, etc. The author expends a lot of effort to impart lessons on color harmony and palettes as they relate specifically to watercolor. She has a competent, friendly, and encouraging style of writing. It reads more like a one-on-one class with a friendly and talented teacher.

Roughly half of the book is technique and color theory and half is specific project tutorials. The tutorials are all professional and beautiful looking and they utilize the techniques and color theory from the beginning chapters. Each tutorial includes a palette in color alongside a photo of the finished painting followed by step by step directions for achieving similar results. Each of the tutorial steps is captioned with simple and easy to understand direction.

This is a basic book but it's full of good techniques and will provide some useful takeaways for the majority of readers/artists.This would be a good choice for the artist's home studio, as well as for public and school library acquisition.

Four and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.