Watercolor Composition Made Easy

This artists is a master in color and composition, shadow and light. Highly recommendable for transparant watercoloring. Realistic but at the same time expressionist.

While there are many wonderful books available about other aspects of watercolor, this book is unique in its emphasis on the way that shape, line, value and color can be combined to create the desired visual flow to a well-positioned center of interest. The many color illustrations demonstrate how attention to composition makes the difference between a pleasant-enough painting (perhaps with beautifully done elements), versus a painting that really comes together as a cohesive and compelling whole.The book is well-organized into lessons which build on each other. Becker writes clear instructions and provides beautiful illustrations to demonstrate every point. For example, on just one page he takes us from the original reference photo of a street work crew, through black and white versions, to his finished painting, showing (as well as describing) how he changed the value contrast and colors to improve the overall composition. Watercolor Composition Made Easy does an excellent job of presenting "rules" for placement of the elements of a painting, and it also does much more. It addresses the familiar watercolor considerations such as blurred versus hard edges, light and dark values, the color wheel, and perspective, but always in terms of how they contribute to the overall composition. This book also provides many miscellaneous tips which Becker has developed in his extensive career. For example, I found the description of (and sample sketches from) his portable sketching setup to be particularly intriguing and helpful.