[.ca] Mastering Atmosphere & Mood in Watercolor: The Critical ... (ISBN 1929834179)

Teaches you nothing:
This book has no instruction that is usable. A waste of time and money. Zbukvic may be a respected artist, but a teacher he is not. One specific--the instruction is based upon the "watercolor clock" which is so much unsuable nonsense. It doesn't even stand-up to its own logic. I'm throwing up my hands and throwing this book in the recycling bin.

Great Paintings BUT>>>:
The paintings are both stunning and unattainably great, and Zbukvic should have limited himself to the paintings and demos the book. There are enough good demos in this book to make this book a must have, given that the art is so stellar. However, he uses a flawed teaching tool to teach others how to master a logical method for knowing when to use what degree of wetness in a wash for atmospheric results (the 'watercolor clock' graphic). The clock is a sort of pie chart that on one side has degrees of wetness and on the other applications. The idea is that the big hand will point to a use and the little hand to a degree of wetness. But the hands of a clock can be moved anywherearbitrarily! There is no rule governing when to move , say, one hand to 10 o'clock and the other to 3 oclock . Without such a rule you are left simply with the information that degrees of wetness exist and various situations exist but no means of coordinating when to use what. In other words its a gimmick to sell books & would have flunked as a sixth grade science fair project. That being said his art is so absolutely great that even a flawed gimmicky trick can be overlooked in favor of his great talent and his helpful demos.

time:
I ordered this book because of the good reviews but wondered why there were so many negative commments about the clock chart. I was curious to see how someone obviously seemed to show such skill in painting would have a silly idea. I looked at this method for charting the amount of wetness and paint consistency used to illustrate his painting style and could not find anything wrong with the clock graph other than is doesn't have much to do with a clock. The idea clearly shows however a simple way to understand what he is teaching. So all of you who are having trouble reading the time, try thinking outside the box a little more!

No teaching involved in this book!:
If you want a book to learn from and instruction, don't buy this one.

Incredible Art...tiresome reading:
The art work is of the highest quality...the text is very poorly edited. What are "tyres"? (aka tires, like on a car), the writing is plagued with misspellings (maybe that's the way it's spelled in Australia!). Australiaisms abound to such a degree that I have no idea what their talking about. Making tea, coffee, milk, etc. from paint becomes tiring. One of the demonstration paintings clearly shows the artist's full arm in the painting during the demostration but yet in the side bar describes the painting as 7"x12" (The Artist must have and extremely short arm!) However, that said, the paintings are incredible and breathe-taking! I will be practicing and trying to duplicate these moody effects for a long time. It is amazing how much detail can be shown with so few brush stokes. Zubukvic really shines! Don't forget to get his friend Alvaro's book "Painting with passion". You can see how their styles are similar. A feast for the eyes and an insight as to how artists view the world. I wish all art books could be so splended. It's to bad these artist spend so much of their time in other parts of the world, I would love to be in their workshops.