How To Paint Water In Watercolour

Featuring tips and techniques by Joe Dowden to help artists better represent water.

A compilation of in-depth exercises and practical projects created by the artist Joe Dowden, to help seasoned artists master representing water in watercolour. With content selected specially from two of Joe''s previous titles, the book features over 350 colour illustrations and inspirational photographs. A fresh new design breathes new life into established tips and techniques.

Introduction

Materials

Making water look wet

Composition

Six exercises
1. Using tone to paint low sunlight on water
2. Sunlit water
3. Deep water
4. Upside-down sky
5. Rippled water and boats in Venice
6. Waterfall

Painting projects
Flat, still water
Puddles
Rippled water
Seascape
Shallow water
Richness and depth
Sparkling sea

Gallery

Index

This is another of the bind-ups and re-workings that Search Press are making something of a speciality of at the moment. I think that needs to be said, if only to alert buyers to the fact that it is not all new material. And, as ever, the job has been done so well that you might, at first glance, think that it is.

This is based on two previous volumes, Watercolour Tips & Techniques: Painting Water from 2003 and 2014’s Joe Dowden’s Complete Guide to Painting Water in Watercolour. Only a cynic would question why the latter needs any augmentation, so I will. The simple fact of it is: simplicity. The Complete Guide was encyclopaedic in its content and something for the more experienced practitioner. The Tips & Techniques title is perhaps beginning to look a little dated and was rather more elementary. There’s clear space for something in between and, while water is not a subject that books exactly ignore, if you have Joe Dowden on hand, why not make use of him?

Bind-ups often suffer from being exactly that. Every book has its own introductory material and ways in, as well as idiosyncrasies and shoving multiple titles together leads to repetition and ungainly jumps. What you need to do is extract the best, or most suitable, bits from each one and then re-originate so that the new work is genuinely new and has a coherence of its own. If you can see the joins, it hasn’t worked.

Search Press have, as I’ve remarked, form on this and it’s very good form. This has a nice progression to it and works perfectly as an introductory course in painting water that won’t blind the beginner with science or, for that matter, leave the more experienced tutting with frustration. Those amongst you eyeing up your backlists, take note.

I was over the moon to win a copy of this book as I always have trouble with water. This book shows you how to bring all types of water to life. Would happily recommend to anyone and I look forward using the book

From pools to lakes and seas, Joe shows you how to interpret the effect of water using watercolour paints. He discusses materials, composition, tips and techniques so that you can depict water. There are six exercises to help you, many finished paintings and seven projects to aid your confidence too.The colour section is very good with a useful green and a grey grid. The section on ''wet'' water is also very useful. I love the painting project - ''Flat, Still Water'' portraying the setting sun, but the other projects are just as good and demonstrate puddles, reflections, ripples, seascape and more. There is also a gallery of work. Nicely produced book with excellent photography, great projects and practical information and professional tips.