[.ca] The Big Book of Painting Nature in Watercolor (ISBN 0823004996)

THIS BOOK IS AMAZING!:
I have been doing watercolors for a while now and there were certain things about painting nature that I didn't know how to approach. Buying this book, really helped me. It shows you how to paint skies, water, trees and so much more at various times of the day and in different seasons. This book has helped me gained more confidence in landscape painting. It has taught me so much. This book is THE ONE for watercolur landscapes,it is COMPREHENSIVE and COMPLETE and if you buy it you will never be sorry. I'm glad for the day I got a copy.

Numerous step-by-step watercolor techniques:
As a beginning artist, I tend to accumulate technique books. "The Big Book of Painting Nature in Watercolor" has been one of my most useful watercolor books. It is, in fact, the book that my watercolor instructor uses for reference material for her students. The book covers a wide variety of techniques, each in the context of a short, complete, step-by-step project which results in a good-looking painting (I occasionally frame one). Techniques covered include seeing colors, mixing, washes, underpaintings, tilting paper, dry brush, use of wet vs. damp vs. dry paper, various uses and methods for lifting, reflections, lighting, contrast, and many, many more techniques, settings, and approaches to challenging scenes. I learn something different from each project. One implicitly learns the art of simplification and watercolor expression by comparing each projects' nature scene photograph with its respective final painting. That mindset, plus the book's setting-specific techniques, carries over to painting similar scenes outside of the book. It is important to supplement the cookbook nature of the book by applying the same techniques to one's own photo references, and to painting live in nature.

Nice for all levels:
This book is a nice tutorial for different levels of painters looking for activities. Not super loose and not super overworked, the activities are a good primer for more complex paintings down the road. Good color pictures that are not too small. A good skill builder.

Fantastic, easily crate a vast arry of beautiful scenes:
This is a fantastic book that shows you how to create a vast array of beautiful nature scenes and landscapes seamlessly. It is a must have for anyone wanting to paint nature in all its glory. The book starts out with a discussion of tools and materials. It then explains color and its characteristics. A list of all the colors used in the book is provided here. The basic watercolor techniques are covering including laying washes, working wet-in-wet, using a dry brush, masking, creating highlights with an eraser, stippling and more. The book is packed with over 130 lessons that teach you to paint trees, leaves, skies and water. Some projects include painting a delicate tree in a cloud-filled landscape, simplifying a close-up lacy crystal pattern, sorting out a maze or snow-covered branches, paining rapidly flowing water, capturing dripping rain and rendering water reflections. Each lesson deals with a particular subject taken directly from a photograph and a specific problem such as capturing a stormy dawn with mostly dark color but making a thin reddish band look unforced. It then offers a basic solution and provides a step-by-step demonstration of how to go about painting the scene. The wide variety of subjects and the consistent and detailed format of teaching in this book have really helped me improve my painting. The author has a great knack for breaking complex subjects into simple steps and focusing on what is important in making the painting a success.

A Cookbook for Beginning Landscape Watercolorists:
This is a "Joy of Cooking" of nature watercolor images and recipes. The book has hundreds of photo-watercolor pairs to help a watercolorist who might be struggling with a particular problem in representing a scene in nature in watercolor. There are pages on basic techniques and what they look like. There are very specific examples. I had to chuckle at the sheer number of pages and pages of different kinds of cloud formations, for example. The reason why I give it 4 and not 5 stars is that some of the examples were flat and the descriptions too pat. The best advice to give a budding landscape artist is to go LOOK at the world and (as Frida Kahlo said) paint what you see. The examples were a little too cookbook and there is the danger of the student spending too much time at the feet of the master and not enough time at the feet of Mother Nature. So, go look at a nature scene, take a crack at painting what you see, maybe take your own photos of it for draftsmanship later, and then refer to Petrie's book if you get stuck. Or just enjoy it over a cuppa tea when relaxing at home.