Watercolor Bold and Free

So I like the set up of this book. It basically gives you 64 experiments to try, and I find I learn best by a hands-on approach. But here is the big but: some experiments don't include photos, others are black-and-white, which doesn't help at all. I also found the experiments with actual color pictures to be quite muddied. Plus there are no real finished paintings in this book,and I want to feel successful after I'm done playing. The book is also very dated.

This is not your average watercolor book. It was recommended to me by an artist of some repute, who uses the principles to paint non-abstract, but very expressionistic watercolors.Somewhere in the examples of various artists' works, you might find something to stimulate your own sense of the abstract. There are exercises to free up the imagination and use different ways of looking at composition or watercolor media to express new ideas. Not for those looking to do ultra-realism.

I find this book a superb counter to the myriad watercolor books on the market. There is nothing wrong with the realistic painting those books encourage and teach, but the medium offers much more and this book opens up those other vistas.