Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium
Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium is a book by Tom Hoffmann all about his specific style and technique in doing watercolors. It is a large format, glossy full color book. I highly recommend adding this to your library of watercolor books. Here's why.
First, let's make it clear that this isn't a "Watercolors for Dummies" start-at-the-very-basics type of book. It is more about examining a variety of watercoloring situations and figuring out what to do with them. There's a wealth of examples, but you'll want to know the basics. This helps you get out of messy situations - but it assumes you're already painting that landscape or portrait or whatever.
Also, everything in here is done in the Tom Hoffmann way. So if you're looking to expand your stylistic options or to try a variety of techniques, this book won't help. It's all coming from one point of view. But, knowing that, it's great. If you want Tom Hoffmann as your mentor, here he is in all his various facets.
There's a lot of great advice on "when to stop". So many times an artist keeps fiddling and fiddling and never quite is finished. The book helps you figure out when you really ARE done and should move on to something else.
When he presents issues to work on, he shows large images to illustrate what he's talking about. That's extremely helpful.
I also appreciate greatly that the book lays flat, so you can have it before you as you work on painting or fixing something.
So whether it's dealing with darks and lights, rewetting areas, mixing colors, or doing sketches, I recommend having this book in your library.
Rating: 5/5
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