Book Review: Watercolor Tricks & Techniques: 75 New and Classic Painting Secrets

This book has an interesting design. It's spiral-bound with a cover that can be attached together to make the book stand - like a spiral-bound calendar. I guess you can read this book while you're watercolour painting at the same time.

Most of the tricks and techniques are one page descriptions on how you can use various materials with watercolour. A lot of unusual and unexpected materials are featured. Some examples include using alcohol, soap, liquid mask, salt, plastic wrap, crayon and other tools like erasers, sponges, wax, etc. The book's goal is probably to encourage experimentation of all these different mediums.

However, not all the new mediums featured come with actual application on a painting. Some of the examples are just quick splashes to show the possibilities and effects you can achieve.

The techniques-side of the book is not much. There are way more tricks and too few short demonstrations. It does talk about the usual techniques like glazing, wet-on-wet, etc, but again, it's missing the process between the tool and the finished work. And the examples don't look particularly inspiring, which is surprising because Cathy Johnson is a artist with lots of beautiful paintings.

There are interesting ideas and tricks in the book, but if you're looking for more techniques, you should look for dedicated watercolour instructional art books.

Watercolor Tricks & Techniques: 75 New and Classic Painting Secrets is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | JP | CN)

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