Book Review: Charles Reid's Watercolor Solutions: Learn To Solve The Most Common Painting Problems

This book is rather similar to Charles Reid's other book The Natural Way to Paint: Rendering the Figure in Watercolor Simply and Beautifully. The topics here are like continuation from that book but the drawing subjects are different. The instructions are not 100% duplication though, but some of the examples are from that book.

This is a book of watercolour tips. While there are instructions, they are mainly a look at Charles Reid process of painting. The insightful commentary talks about values, composition, colour mixing and planing. There's a useful tutorial about contour drawing, which talks about how to draw what you see. It has a nice loose style.

There are a few paintings created from photos which demonstrate that artists' interpretation is more important than just trying to duplicate the photo realistically. Those lessons are quite helpful.

Charles Reid has a very unique style but nowhere in the book is there any mention on how you can mimic his style. That's great because the instructions are applicable to any artists with their own styles.

Nice book but if you've already have the 'The Natural Way to Paint', this might not be an obvious buy.

You'll need some basic knowledge on watercolour to get learn more from the book. It's not for beginners.

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