Book Review: Watercolour Challenge: Techniques in Practice

Submitted by  Teoh Yi Chie on  March 21, 2011 - 11:47 am

Watercolour Challenge: Techniques in Practice

This book seems to be one of the book published to accompany the Channel 4 series Watercolour Challenge created by Planet 24. That was in 1998. I guess the show was interesting because the content in this book is great.

Below's the list of books from the series, some of which are hard to find.

  • Watercolor Challenge (Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | JP)
  • Watercolour Challenge: Techniques in Practice (Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | JP)
  • Painting with Watercolour Challenge (Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | JP)
  • Watercolour Challenge: Practical Painting Course (Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | JP

Looking at the titles, it's difficult to tell if there's any overlap in content. You've to check out other reviews from Amazon.

For Watercolour Challenge: Techniques in Practice, it is split into three chapters: the techniques, mixing colours and projects. 224 pages in total.

Chapter 1 explores the techniques you can use to tackle different painting subjects, such as elements from the landscape, from the water to the sky. These are one-page lessons that give a step-by-step look and explanation at how to paint. There are hands on practices and demos. The lessons though short are insightful and easy to follow along.

Chapter 2 looks at colour mixing with a limited palette of 12 colours. The palette is based on a warm and cool version of each primary: red, yellow and blue. Each of the 12 colours are mixed in a 80 to 20 ratio and the results are presented on a page for quick referencing. There are also 50-50 mixes but only with colours beside them on the colour wheel. Besides explanation of the pigments, there are also some cool photos of the grounded powder pigments.

Chapter 3 has 22 step-by-step guided projects for additional hands-on practice. Each project is filled with satisfying large pictures of the steps, together with clear instructions. Some projects come with a helpful starting template which you need to redraw onto a bigger surface.

Lots of beautiful watercolour examples are used throughout. It's not just a practical book but also very inspiring.

Recommended to beginner to intermediate watercolour artists.

Watercolour Challenge: Techniques in Practice - 01

Watercolour Challenge: Techniques in Practice - 02

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Watercolour Challenge: Techniques in Practice - 13

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy from the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.co.jp

Tags
instructional art book reviews
watercolour
channel 4 books
watercolour instructional books

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