Creating Watercolor Landscapes Using Photographs

The book is a must for landscape painters and, in my opinion, is worthy for every other watercolor painter. It's plainly explained, it has a number of helpful examples and covers different subejcts you will have to work out in every kind of watercolor painting. One of the must important is how to look trough the camera to get your subject and not just to shoot what by chance is in front of you. Another very good point is the analysis of when and where the camera can improve your workflow helping your creativity, but never replacing it. Last, but not least, it has a very good analysis of how to compose what you see until you are sure it really is your subject: the one. The book has full explanation of different techniques and concerns different issues of subject composition. It's not just a series of lonely landscape of mountains and some houses, with no living being. Don Patterson teaches you how to seamlessly integrate animals and human beings presence in to the whole meaning your subject. The only backdraw is that the book is not the "art academy kind": it doesn't teach you a painting method and then how to apply it to landscape painting. It assumes that you are a landscape painter fully knowing what you are doing. In that sense I higly reccommend it along with David Bellamy's "Watercolour Landscapes Course" that has more the academic style.

Every so often, you check out a book at the library, and turn right around and buy it for yourself. This is one such book. For those of us who paint from photos, this book is a must to have. The illustrations are crisp and the steps clear and easy to follow. From thumbnail sketch to final brush stroke, Mr. Patterson demonstrates how to create a vibrant painting from a ho-hum photo, and how to combine photos for the most impact. What a find!

Usually, skilled people are able to just do and not explain how they do - Mr. Patterson is an exception. In great detail, this book acts as a brilliant text for anyone interested in watercolor painting from the devoted student to the those with casual interest. Beyond the "how to" aspects, Mr. Patterson has been generous enough to include several plates of his own beautiful paintings - indeed, his technique works!