Learning resources: Books I am using, February 2021

Videos are the best but I still like learning from books. I purchased a few. I get some in physical form from the library and I get a lot of books in e-book form from the library.

I am currently working though the following books of tutorials to improve my technique.

Everyday Watercolor, Jenna Rainey

I am just starting this one now. It starts out simple but looks like it builds to a good level of challenge. I have been struggling a bit lately so I am looking forward to working through some simple exercises to build confidence.

Watercolor Basics: Let's get started, Jack Reid

This book has a lot of tutorials. It starts by drilling 4 methods:

Flat wash
Graduated wash
Wet-in-wet
Drybrush

I like this book a lot and should write a full review. It just went back to the library so it will be a few weeks until I have it back.

101 Watercolor Techniques, Parramón Editorial Team

I got this in my order of bargain books. It's actually pretty good. The exercises are basically practice prompts and they start out very accessible to beginners.

Comments

Work from "101 Watercolor techniques" - Exercise 005

This exercise was a bit of a struggle for a beginner. Believe it or not the result below is the third attempt. The point of the exercise was to get a result of depth on the paper using only analogous colours and without using color gradation. I am sure I learned something from it. What I think I struggled with among other things was "water control" - keeping the water within the small leaf areas from running. Learning: As I went along I had a little bit more freedom with the strokes. I started to notice how the exercise author was using negative space and tried to replicate it. \

Simple apple painting

Not sure if this is more successful than my first fruit painting but I certainly thought about it more. I tried to use lifting to get the white spots on the skin (which I think worked ok) and for the reflections around the edge (which didn't really work). I also tried adding white after for the waxy white part of the skin. I know it's not recommended I just wanted to see what it would look like.

Work from "101 Watercolor techniques"

Today I did two projects from the "101 Watercolor techniques" book. Both turned out quite well with some caveats. Number 3 - Cool monochromes The exercise is about mixing Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine to get variations in color. I struggled to get enough reddish brown to display so I had to do a second wash in places to get a nice final result. That was a bit of a cop out but I figured by struggling I had learned a bit of the lesson anyway. Number 4 - Warm monochromes This one is about letting two warm colors mix on the paper. In retrospect I should have done more of that with number 3 as well. This exercise also mostly worked except I didn't get the veins painted until the yellow paint was getting to dry. As a result they look a bit added on - as they are.

Crashing water

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