How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself: Experimental Techniques for Achieving Realistic Effects

Easy to follow, great illustrations

The first chapter was truly inspirational.There are a lot of unconventional painting methods, which may or may not appeal to everyoneIf you can plough your way through the information and methods, I am sure you will enjoy the journey.Once the methods become as second nature to you, your paintings will be of a very high standard.If you like flooding the paint on, throwing it on, squirting it on, and manipulating it with brush, sponge, and tissueyou will like this book.If this doesn't appeal to you at first, I would say 'give it a try'I would say for the record - 'this is the best most inspirational, water colour book I have read.

Some good, some not so good about this book. I am a fairly experienced watercolourist ( well being doing bits and bobs for about 60 years) and I am interested in Nita's work; some of her paintings are wonderful. However this book is a little frustrating - Nita explains some of her techniques but never all of the ones she uses to obtain her results. For instance she will explain precisely how she starts off a painting and then says ' oh well, finishing it is just hard work!' Well, I wanted to know how she achieved some of the finished result, which I am not sure about just looking at the print of the painting. I think I can learn something but not so much as I hoped

I am delighted with this book. Nita Engle takes us on a journey of discovery... step by step... but in my opinion, this is NOT a beginners book. More a guidance for watercolourists wanting to develop their landscape paintings. It is full of inspirational ideas on how to free yourself up, discover your own style, perhaps even try adding mixed media. It starts with the tools she uses to detailed step by step examples and exercises. It covers techniques... creating light, texture, and design and importantly, challenges your emotional attachment to your subject and how to bring that into your painting. Good luck!! I am only just beginning...!

Not a book for the beginner, this lady knows what works and how to go about it. She takes you on a journey where you have to work at it - no rules, just experiment. We all know watercolour can be induced to do wonderful things - just play and enjoy. Very liberating. The book is full of luminescent paintings; I particularly liked Mountain Cove - made me want to revisit some of my earlier sketches. It spurred me on

Actually this was nearly 5 stars as it is very inspirational - but some of the text does not seem to match up well enough to the picture, with some stages left unexplained. Some of the products mentioned/used could have done with a translation - from American into English. But I am glad I bought it, and I have already used some of the tecniques..

Brilliant book especially if you want your paintings to become looser.

Wow, this book has my mouth watering about all these things I can do. It is going to be my bible for some time!