Watercolour books

More books to learn! A brief review – all from my local library. Every art book seems to do an intro of their favourite tools they use and it’s amazing even though I’ve read so many there’s always a tip here and there to pick up.

Hazel Soan’s Art of the Limited Palette – this is such an inspiring book I love Hazel’s use of colour and light. I found some great tips for mixing colours and gained a better understanding of when to use warm and cool colours. I found this book just manageable now that I have been practising for some time and whilst her paintings look spontaneous and simple when I attempted to copy them I found it quite challenging but learnt a lot from just attempting to copying them. I also was able to use this to experiment with different techniques such as negative painting.

This is hard to follow as a beginner as there’s more tips but not much instruction or step by step. But if you’re able to learn by copying others art there’s a lot to learn. 

Basic Watercolour by Charles Williams

This was a great book that goes through the basics step by step.

The artist’s colour guide to watercolour was a good introduction to use and mix your own colours. There were some instructions to create different paintings of different styles and a great way to explore and find  style you prefer.

Watercolour mixing directory – I found this helpful in looking at the different combinations and help select the minimum colours. I found this book overwhelming and whilst is a good reference and had a great introduction to watercolour techniques, it wasn’t as helpful as the others for reference photos.

Charles Evans’s Watercolour Rescue

This is a great book troubleshooting how to correct common mistakes. It also explains how and why it happened in the first place and is a great book to help fine tune your techniques. 

Lettering with love

This book started my segway into the world of calligraphy. I’ve borrowed this a few times and it’s got some great watercolor projects that are using predominantly watercolor and does lettering with a watercolor brush.

The last one I can’t read or remember the title. Let me know if you would love to hear other art book recommendations.