Watercolor Made Simple

June 10, 2024

Traikos (Trace and Paint Nature) provides straightforward advice and encouragement to aspiring watercolor painters, in this book offering guidance and 15 basic painting exercises. Adapting the book from her online watercolor-painting classes, Traikos gives readers permission to accept imperfections, placing emphasis on the process instead of the finished product. Starting with an overview of necessary supplies, the book takes readers through basic watercolor techniques, such as waking up paint, mixing colors, applying wet-on-wet and dry-on-wet strokes, and layering. It also demonstrates the ways to hold a brush to alter the thickness of lines. Stressing the importance of muscle memory in the learning process, Traikos suggests simple, repetitive exercises--creating color swatches and easy shapes such as leaves, for example--to gain comfort with watercolors. Readers are encouraged to repurpose their practice pictures into bookmarks, gift tags, and other paper crafts. Templates for each of the painting exercises can be copied from the book or downloaded, and scannable codes accompanying the techniques lead to short videos that illustrate the methods. VERDICT An innovative, highly useful work for beginning watercolorists.--Sara Shreve

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