Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner: The essential watercolour painting guide

Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner is actually a collection of 3 books that were published earlier, namely You Can Paint Watercolors by Alwyn Crawshaw, You Can Paint People in Watercolour by Sharon Finmark and You Can Paint Animals in Watercolour by Trevor Waugh. It's now sold together as a 224-page paperback at a wonderful bundle price. This is probably the least intimidating watercolour book I've seen. The exercises are short and easy to follow. It shouldn't take more than 15-30 minutes to complete each one. The examples are simple, usually a single subject, like a banana or some grapes. Even for the landscape paintings, there are also very few elements included. The simple examples are great in a way because they build confidence. What's lacking is perhaps the section on colour theory. It teaches basic colour mixing, with simple recipes provided in all the exercises. But it doesn't talk about colour harmony, like how some colours work well with others. Anyway, you can get another book for that called Watercolor Artist's Guide to Exceptional Color by Jan Hart. This book is highly recommended to watercolour beginners who want something less intimidating. Or if you want something more challenging, but still suitable for beginners, check out Complete Watercolour Course by John Raynes. (There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Wonderful book. Full of tips and help.

Its a great book for a complete beginner. The advice was invaluable and gave me some great ideas. I feel that there needed to be more emphasis on different techniques, and a little more colour theory and compositional theory would have been great, but for someone looking for a direction to experiment in, it can't be beaten.

Because this book is actually 3 artists books the range of colours used is quite large (Approx 28). If you were to buy all of these colours especially at artist quality it would prove expensive. I have done a quick check of how often colours are used and come up with 3 groups. the first are the ones that are used over 20 times. (French Ultramarine, Alizarin Crimson, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Red, Hooker's Green, Sepia (only for portraits), Cadmium Yellow). The next group appear over 10 times. (Burnt Umber, Cadmium Orange, Raw Sienna, Naples Yellow, Payne's Grey, Permanent Rose, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Violet). The last group are only used a handful of times. (Cobalt Blue, Prussian Blue, Vandyke Brown, Chinese White, Lemon Yellow, Ivory Black, Indigo, Green Gold, Rose Madder, Viridian, Emerald Green). I would suggest that you use a colour chart to see if you can substitute the hardly used colours for more frequent ones. I.e. Hooker's Green for Viridian, French Ultramarine for Prussian Blue, not exact matches but close. I would not use Rose madder as it fades quite quickly. Also for beginners it can be quite frustrating if you do a good painting that the paper can buckle (I won't use the correct term as it will probably fall foul of the censors!) So for my 'attempts' at proper painting I use blocks rather than pads of paper. For brushes I have always found Pro Arte to be good quality.

Ever since I watched Alwyn Crawshaw's Channel 4 series on watercolours for beginners back in the 1980s, I've thought I ought to test my skills with a paintbrush. With retirement came the opportunity! Crawshaw is one of the three authors of this readable book and it's an easy read. Even if you don't intend painting, the book is interesting. From sketching and painting a banana through to sweeping landscapes and portraiture, it's all here. Tips on what brushes to use, which pencil leads to employ, the colour pans to buy, the paper quality to use and - most important of all - the tricks of the trade. Painting wet-on-wet has provided me with some wonderfully leaden skies and I never realised before that bit of sponge could be used so creatively to produce cloud cover. I don't think I'll be pursuing each and every lesson but I find myself regularly dipping into the book for advice and inspiration or simply to marvel at how experts can so effortlessly use contrast and colour washes to deliver a variety of striking images. Ever thought how you create waterscapes with sunlight glinting on the surface of the sea? Easy. Read this book!

Great book for beginners or professionals

This has three authors on different subjects basics, landscapes, people and so on. This works really well as there is some overlap and I much prefer more than one view. The authors are clearly very experienced grading the exercises really well. Watercolour work needs to be taken slowly and this is just the book to take you over the basic stages to quite a high level enough to do paintings good enough to show. The book gives guidance on drawing that looks fine to me but it would be better to go through a how to draw book beforehand - doing the two together is rather heroic.

Like some people mention its 3 books in one so you do find that they repeat themselves a few times in each part (e.g how to create a wash, dry etc) Unlike other books I have seen on Amazon there is no section to trace the drawings in order to paint them in. I do not mind this too much as I am good at drawing and wanted to learn just painting. If you wanted to learn drawing and painting at the same time it may frustrate you a bit. Overall I am happy with the book. It starts with fruit then scenery, then people and animals. Just from reading through the book I understand how the layers are different (I normally use a Wacom tablet) and how to add in shadows etc.

I'm still working my way through this book but so far I have learned so much. I'm a beginner watercolorist and this was just what I needed to get me started.

This is the best tutorial watercolor book I've come across. All the authors are excellent teachers. Love it! Love the style of art as well.

Great book for beginners as myself. Easy reading and teaching different techniques to apply. Quite happy with this book

Very well explained.. quality n packing awesome

Ich gehöre zu den Personen, die mit wenig zeichnerischem Talent gesegnet sind. Diese Buch hat alles was man zum Malen mit Aquarellfarben benötigt. Mischtechniken, Landschaft, Personen, Tiere, alles wird dargestellt und erklärt. Schade das solche Bücher nicht auch auf deutsch erhältlich sind. Dieses gehört definitiv in jedes Buchregal.