This makes a great addition to the growing mindful coloring and drawing cannon. The picture of a hand holding a marker on the cover helps to clarify that this is not a watercolor book; instead, simple pen drawings and doodles can be added over the existing watercolor patters. With simple suggestions and beautiful palettes, the reader is invited into a respite of creativity and calm that is hard to resist. Highly recommended for individuals and groups of all ages focusing on mindfulness.

Color in Reverse: Watercolor Florals is a fun and pretty book. Rather than a coloring book, this already has the coloring and you draw over the colors. I’ve only read through the digital edition but plan on buying a hard copy.

This was such a helpful book! My daughter and I had a painting night and referenced this book and tried to copy the beautiful art!

I wasn't sure what the book meant by colour in reverse. Its a great idea for doing doodles with the watercolour paint going down first and then you drawing what you think should be the images.

There are great tutorials for ideas for what you could draw. and a bit of colour theory in there as well. It is a lovely book. I would highly recommend it. The watercolours are so pretty and it had my creative juices flowing. Definitely would recommend getting the book in physical form as I had it as a download so couldn't really play with my ideas.

Thanks' to Netgalley and Quatro Publishing Group - Walter Foster for the ARC and Thanks to the Author Heinke Nied for a lovely book. This review is my own opinion.

Will add review to amazon once the book is released.

I really enjoyed the thought behind this book, which is to encourage relaxation through creativity, where the process of creating art is more important than having a perfect product. This would be a great book for someone who just wants to relax doing something creative and has limited experience with watercolours or drawing. As someone who is an artist, I think the overall message of just playing around, getting familiar with different mediums and shapes and enjoying the process be great core messages for any budding artist.

However, I would not use this book as a "How to" watercolour or drawing book. The advice and instructions on how to make the doodles she has presented are quite limited. They tend towards basics, with some examples of the type of doodles you can make using one line. She gives enough to give a starting point, a collection of doodle templates to give you something to start drawing and really encourages you to experiment from there.

What this book is good at is giving you a whole lot of pages where you are encouraged to play around with the kind of one-line drawing she has demonstrated with the watercolour already provided. you can embellish them how you wish. Use the instructions for drawing she provided, or experiment with your own drawings.

From a learning point of view, the way this is set out with the pages to play is a good starting point because learning to draw is best done through practice and experimentation. The encouragement to focus on the process is a really healthy approach as well. I've met many artists starting out who get paralyzed by trying to produce an end result, rather than enjoying the process.

I would say it is aimed at an audience who is more novice or wants to use art as a stress relief. It does not provide in-depth techniques on how to produce certain effects. Someone who picked it up for this purpose may be disappointed.

What it reminds me of is a free-style adult colouring book where you get some advice on how to make your own flower doodles The aim of the book is more on providing a scaffolded relaxation activity, and a very very brief introduction to drawing. You also get some brief tips on watercolour.

The watercolour images provided to draw on and embellish are pretty, with a variety of different shapes and colours and subjects to stop it feeling repetitive.

Since I received a digital copy to review I can only comment on the content of the book rather than the quality of the paper in the physical copy provided for readers to paint and draw on. Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the advanced digital copy.

A little difficult to fully review this as I had a digital copy, which obviously means I am not going to be able to engage with the book in the way that was intended - via doodling and drawing straight onto it. I like the idea and concept of drawing and doodling for mindfulness, and I personally enjoy zentangling (different to this, but a similar concept) but I thought the instructions and prompts in the book were rather brief. Further guidance and exploration of different techniques would have been beneficial and I thought the multiple pages at the end felt a little like I was being robbed of what should have been there to give it more oomph. My feelings were overall rather luke warm - it was ‘ok’, but nothing particularly new, enlightening or super engaging within this.
Thank you to Netgalley and Walter Foster publishing for an ARC.

I loved looking at this. As an author/illustrator, I found the colourful patterns to be inspirational. Easily combined with the instructional pages at the front of the book, this "reverse" colouring book provides you beautiful backdrops on which to add your own creative touches whether they be line drawings or adding more patterns. A wonderful starting point for a relaxing afternoon of creativity.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a fun book!

It's a nice guide to creating watercolor pieces based on flowers and plants. The book has helpful information on colors, shapes, and learning a different way to create a painting of flowers. It's a simple and helpful book to learn more about watercolors.

This book shows you the basics of drawing lines to create florals and birds as well as how to use and blend different water colors. Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read this book in exchange for my honest feedback!

Thank you netgalley for this ARC I exchange of my honest review.
This is a nice discovery in term of watercolour. I never thought to use it as a background. This book gives great inspiration and also give opportunity to use the premade watercolour background within the book. Unfortunately I had only an e-arc and couldn't use it. I really liked it and would like to try and develop my creativity.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the opportunity to review this book.

The book had some of basic instructions on how to paint. It is definitely useful for beginners.

This is a fun book to help stir your watercolor creativity! I would recommend this to anyone that wants to watercolor and doesn’t know where to begin. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy in exchange for a review.

Not what I was expecting at all when I took a look at this book. I love the approach of making art accessible to people especially watercolour as one of my favourite mediums. The explanations are simple and give a lot of room for creativity but just enough to get over the “I’m going to ruin this” fear. I hope there are more to join this one that are different themes!

W0w. Every part of this book was stunning!! The front cover alone was enticing and had a classic elegance to it that instantly relaxed me. It didn't take long to read the instructions at the beginning and perusing the supplied water colour images for those who buy the book to engage with was a joy.
The instructions in the beginning were easy and approachable and the inspiration pages provided gentle guidance and weren't patronising like in some books.
It was nice to see a tools list that was quite manageable and wouldn't require me going out and spending obscene amounts of money to engage in this hobby.
The water colour images supplied were vibrant, beautiful and have the potential to allow for diverse expressions of creativity. I was able to marvel at the talent of the artist creating them, without my own creative thoughts being stifled.
This book truly looks like an avenue for genuine expression of creativity, learning a new skill and an opportunity to engage in mindful relaxation.

A fantastic book, this is great for doodlers and it gives your mind a lovely break, I’m going to buy myself a copy when it is released.

What a charming little book. It doesn’t overwhelm you with instructions or info about watercolor art materials or color theory.

It gives you ideas to doodle with ink pens. Also, the color combinations and splashes of color give suggestions of florals that you could doodle over. Its focus is on relaxation.

Thank you NetGalley, the author and the publisher, for the opportunity to read and give an honest review of this book.

If you purchased the paper copy of this book, you would be able to doodle with ink pens, right over the ‘flower’ pages.

A hood book for some basic watercolor ideas. It staets with some basic instructions on how to draw some items and even suggestions of pens and tools to use to create different effects you may want. I did think there would be more information or "teachings" included in the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the opportunity to review an advance digit copy of this book that is due to publish 11APR2023. The opinions above are my own and this is my honest review.

The author laid out different techniques well before the projects came up. I think, however, there were too many watercolor sheets where the design was very apparent and we couldn’t be more create with finding our own “picture” from the abstract watercolor. Definitely needs to be bought as a physical copy so that’s also factored into my review of this book.

A lovely book of abstract watercolors that the reader uses to expand on to create their own artwork. There is some basic instruction upfront on drawing flowers, trees, people, and even examples and suggestions of pens and tools to use to create different effects you may want, but not really a helpful tool for someone looking to learn more about watercolor or even drawing techniques.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the opportunity to review an advance digit copy of this book that is due to publish 11APR2023. The opinions above are my own and this is my honest review.

I love the simplicity of the loose watercolor flowers. Having the added option of doodling for more details makes this book simple for beginners.