The Art of Watercolor

About this book

Now published in full color for the first time and with many new illustrations this revised edition of The Art of Watercolor is a complete update of the classic text on this most popular of mediums. In a refreshing and entertaining style Charles Le Clair covers every aspect of painting in watercolor giving advice on essential materials and providing easy-to-follow sequential instruction on both traditional and special techniques. Here you will learn how to stretch paper and what colors you need in a basic palette; how to lay flat and graded washes on wet or dry paper; how to master value and color; how to set up a still life and develop a composition; and how to paint wet-into-wet. Youll also learn the tricks and thoughtful applications of special effects like dry-brush salting lifting scraping masking spattering and collage. But The Art of Watercolor is much more than a how-to manual - it presents a comprehensive course of study. Unlike any other watercolor instruction book it integrates studio lessons on the technical and esthetic properties of the medium with art history. In covering the range of styles and methods the author shows how a master watercolorist - John Singer Sargent Paul Cezanne Charles Demuth Wassily Kandinsky - applied each approach in a particular work. Youll learn in detail how the different styles everything from the realism of Winslow Homer to the expressionism of Charles Burchfield represent the painting strategies these artists adopted with specific goals in mind. Up-to-the-minute applications of all these techniques are illustrated in the works of exciting contemporary masters as well - such as Andrew Wyeth Janet Fish Philip Pearlstein and Neal Welliver. Exploring the three main areas of still life landscape and figure painting The Art of Watercolor is a beautiful resource that professional artists teachers and students will value as the most informative and delightful book of its kind.