I started playing with watercolors for fun in the past few months. This book has great tips for taking basic paint to the next level, adding depth and dimension. I look forward to trying some of the methods in my practice!

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarry Books for an advanced copy of this book!

As a professional illustrator, I am always looking to push my skills into new directions and was excited to see this book on watercolor textures.

As an experienced watercolorist I didn’t find any new or groundbreaking techniques but I did enjoy the artist’s approach to working with watercolor to achieve different visual textures.

The challenge I have with the book is that on the back cover it states that the book is directed toward artists of all skill levels. I believe that if I were a beginner I would have some frustrations with the book. For example, the list of supplies mentioned in the book on pages 17-21 do not cover everything that is mentioned in the book such as:
- opaque white ink (page 16)
- masking fluid (page 64)
- metallic watercolors (page 78)

I would imagine that an inexperienced watercolorist who would like to try duplicating the water example on page 64 might have a hard time doing that if they are not familiar with masking fluid and how it works.

I really appreciated how the author did not make a specific list of watercolor brand (and it’s colors) to reproduce the techniques but an inexperienced artist would not be aware of pigment dispersion between the different brands and might be confused when they can’t get the same results as the author did for the sample images. Mentioning the specific brand and color for the examples could be very helpful for that reason.

The author makes recommendations in the supply list for the products they prefer but they don’t state a reason for that preference. I believe that this would be helpful to artists of all skill levels to know the reasoning so that it can help us with an informed decision when we are looking to try unfamiliar products.

I enjoyed the artists encouragement to experiment and I really like their art style. There are a few techniques that were suggested that I haven’t played with in a while and this book gave me the inspiration to do so.

Overall I enjoyed the book however I would not recommend it to new watercolor artists.

A huge thank you for my e-ARC, which was provided by the publisher and the author via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This book came at the right time as my 2024 goal is to explore watercolor, zentangles and mixed media art. I loved flipping through this book and grabbing my journal to give these exercises a try. Informative, without going too in depth.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

This is such a cool book! I've always wanted to get into watercolor, but at the same time I've always thought it was rather boring. This book is full of ideas for fun and funky textures that I never would have thought of on my own. The first half is full of texture samples. I love all the designs and am now itching to pull out my paints and create some texture samples of my own.

The second half takes those texture samples and shows how you can put them together to create a finished piece. Again, I'm so glad I have this guide because it would never have occurred to me to put them together in such a way. But now I'm bursting with ideas.

This is a great book for getting creative juices flowing and getting you excited about experimenting with watercolor. I think it would be good for beginners and those with more experience to help them shake up their technique and inject some fun.

*Thanks to NetGalley, Quarto, and Quarry Books for providing an early copy for review.

This is a beautiful and practical book. Excellent for beginners or those who want to learn how to control paint. The projects are easy to follow and truly beautiful. There are templates for those not confident in drawing. My review is based on a prepublication edition from NetGalley. I will be buying my own hard copy on publication it’s inspired me that much.

As someone new to watercolour, having only dabbled before, this is a brilliant resource. Whilst I myself found it useful, I think proficient water colour artists would also find it a useful resource to refer to and be inspired by, albeit may find it too brief to gain huge amounts from.

So many good images about watercolor. This book is great for beginners all the way to experienced painters. Many great resources in this book. I love the templates at the end.