Reviewed by annieb123 on
Contemporary Color Theory: Watercolor Flowers is a well written watercolor tutorial for botanical subjects by Manushree Mishra. Due out 5th July 2022 from Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 128 pages and will be available in paperback format.
The layout follows the familiar Walter Foster tutorial format. An introduction covers tools and supplies and is followed by a short and easily accessible general watercolor tutorial and an introduction to necessary techniques and info about value, water control, pigment saturation, etc. The author expends a lot of effort to impart lessons on color harmony and palettes as they relate specifically to watercolor. She has a competent, friendly, and encouraging style of writing. It reads more like a one-on-one class with a friendly and talented teacher.
Roughly half of the book is technique and color theory and half is specific project tutorials. The tutorials are all professional and beautiful looking and they utilize the techniques and color theory from the beginning chapters. Each tutorial includes a palette in color alongside a photo of the finished painting followed by step by step directions for achieving similar results. Each of the tutorial steps is captioned with simple and easy to understand direction.
This is a basic book but it's full of good techniques and will provide some useful takeaways for the majority of readers/artists.This would be a good choice for the artist's home studio, as well as for public and school library acquisition.
Four and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- Finished reading
- 29 June, 2022: Reviewed