Color Mixing Recipes for Watercolor by William F Powell

Color Mixing Recipes for Watercolor (Color Mixing Recipes)

by William F Powell

'The perfect guide for any aspiring watercolorist, this book includes more than 400 paint recipes, each revealing the color proportions and dilution level needed to achieve the featured swatch. Artists also will discover helpful tips about altering values, graying with complements, and creating portrait colors. A color mixing grid makes measuring simple, and the concealed wire-o bound book lies flat when opened for convenience.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Color Mixing Recipes for Watercolor is a tutorial guide with recipes for palette mixing by William F. Powell. Originally released in 2007 this reformat and re-release is due out 22nd June 2021 from Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint. It's 48 pages and will be available in paperback format.

This is a no-nonsense bare bones mixing guide for watercolor media. The mixing diagrams are specific and useful. The charts are arranged according to color and contain specific values and ranges for 450 colors from 28 base colors (Burnt sienna, Burnt umber, Cadmium orange, Cadmium red light, Cadmium yellow, etc).

The author has also included a short tutorial on watercolor mixing specifically for portraiture with a good overview over values and tones for skin colors across a wide range of skins.The book also includes a short tutorial about color theory.

This is a very short book but very useful. It would make a good reference for maker's spaces, studios, library acquisition, or the home studio.

Four stars.

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

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 23 May, 2021: Finished reading
  • 23 May, 2021: Reviewed