Book Review: 600 Watercolor Mixes: Washes, Color Recipes and Techniques

The 600 watercolor mixes are split into mixes created by three techniques, namely palette mixing, overlaying and wet-on-wet. So each technique features slightly under 200 mixes each, with the rest appearing in other parts of the book. So basically, the colour recipes are similar across each technique, just that the effects are different.

The colours featured are from the colour wheel, namely Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Permanent Rose, Violet, Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, Hooker's Green, Viridian, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Vandyke Brown and Payne's Gray. There's no mention of the brand used.

The recipes are all mixed at 50 percent each, in each technique. There's no variation in proportion of pigment or water used. If you want to look at different proportions of pigment and water, look at Color Mixing Recipes for Watercolor.

The text and some example paintings are alright, not terribly exciting but I guess they serve their purpose. They talk about the primary, secondary and tertiary colours, the colour wheel and harmony, and basic properties of pigments. It's all very elementary stuff that's probably included in beginner watercolour books.

As a quick reference guide, it does its job. I just wished there could be more on proportion variation, which is included in the other book I mentioned above.

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