annieb123's Review of Nature Painting in Watercolor (The Art of)

by Kristine A. Lombardi

Find inspiration in the great outdoors and create simple, expressive watercolor paintings of the plants and animals that live there.

In Nature Painting in Watercolor, beginning and aspiring artists can learn to paint their favorite ferns, leaves, trees, florals, as well as animals, in a contemporary style using the popular watercolor medium. Start by learning about the tools and materials needed to paint in watercolor; then dive into a thorough and fun painting techniques section, which covers washes, glazes, how to add detail in watercolor, and much more. If you’d like to spend more time outside (who doesn’t?), check out the section on finding inspiration outside for tips on viewing and gathering natural painting subjects, such as trees, grasses, flowers, and many other plants.

And if you can’t get outside, we’ve got you covered as well, with suggestions for where to find images online and photos to use as references. Also learn to sketch and keep a detailed sketchbook—skills that will help you when you get started on the step-by-step painting projects in the largest section of the book.

The step-by-step projects cover popular natural painting subjects, including the ones already listed here as well as rocks, mushrooms, buds, blooms, big and small trees, and forest animals. All are illustrated and painted in the author/artists’s signature contemporary watercolor style.

Nature Painting in Watercolor offers a fun, refreshing look at painting plants for today’s artist.

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Nature Painting in Watercolor is a tutorial and style guide for watercolor by Kristine A. Lombardi. Due out 23rd March 2021 from Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format.

The author has an inviting, calm, and encouraging style of writing. She explains a bit of her own background and reasons for starting with nature sketchbooks and inspirations she has gathered on her walks, and invites the reader to find the methods and inspirations which work for them. The brief introduction includes an illustrated list of tools and supplies and some (very) basic techniques for getting paint onto paper, for sketching, for selecting subjects and other useful information for beginning painters. Especially salient tips and info is written into highlighted text boxes which are easy to find and remember. Chapters with specific tutorials are grouped thematically: ground cover (ferns mushrooms & rocks), flowers (buds stems & blooms), critters, seasonal bits (leaves pods & thistle), and trees.

Each of the tutorials includes specific step by step color photos and process illustrations with instructions for color choice, brushes, and special techniques used. Most of the tutorials cover a couple of pages and are simple enough to give beginning watercolorists confidence by rendering them as illustrated.

The author has also included a number of collage photos for inspiration and reference.

This is a very pretty book with a lot of useful information and tips for rendering natural subjects with watercolor.

Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Nature Painting in Watercolor (The Art of)

by Kristine A. Lombardi

Reviewed by annieb123 on Mar 7, 2021

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