Cover Image: The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook - Keep Painting!

The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook - Keep Painting!

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Member Reviews

I loved this book. Gordon’s opening chapters are some of the most encouraging and inspiring I have ever read in a how-to drawing or painting book. Instead of focussing on tools and basics, we delve into the psychological process and Gordon has a great way of making you realise that you CAN do it! Though his stunning watercolours are enviable, Gordon breaks down the techniques for us and to accompany his motivational content he has produced some brilliant illustrations with captions that made me laugh. Gordon has more books in this series which I’ll no doubt enjoy equally as much.

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This was so detailed and I think a physical copy is a mist for this. Because you may want to keep going back to it form time to time to ace the techniques etc.

Special thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for this review copy.

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This book is filled with great painting tips and techniques. The theory can be applied to acrylic and oil painting. Gordon focuses on landscapes. He covers, trees, could, water and more. Beginners as well as intermediate painters will enjoy this book.

I received the galley from Netgalley.

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A creative and informative guide to watercolor for those with experience who want to improve their skills. It contains tons of painting techniques with step-by-step information on everything from colors to composition. This book includes helpful tips that will make a great painter even better, and make great paintings easier. Worth a read for anyone interested in watercolor, even beginners.

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A big thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. I am voluntarily reviewing this book. I do not paint at all. I got this book on a whim. I loved it, and truly wish that I could utilize the information!! I am a complete layman about art, and this was written in such a way that I completely understood. Beautiful and inspiring. So jealous of those you with artistic skills. Well worth a read

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Beautifully illustrated book, full of inspiring tips and hints. Definitely lots of extra advice I hadn't seen before. I thought the projects were inspiring and came away with lots of ideas and inspiration. A really good book to add to any artists collection and a great one for beginners too. Thank you

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This is a wonderful guide to using your water colors to best advantage, for those new to the art or trying to pick it back up. Mostly I am just stale, but this book awoke the joy of painting back in me. There are the old 'tricks' to add depth and dimensions to your work, but also new and well phrased ideas to get back into a painting frame of mind. This is a book I can recommend to new painters as well as to those old one's like me who sat it aside when life got hectic and have failed to break out the easel now that there is lots of time .

I received a free electronic copy of this painting guide from Netgalley, Gordon MacKenzie, and North Light Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

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I recieved a free digital copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review.
This is a great book choc full of tips, tricks and pictures. I loved the step-by-step instructions on some of the techniques.
This would be a great book for anyone looking to expand their watercolor skills.

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It's not an ordinary how-to-paint- watercolors book, it is so entertaining, creative and also fun. The level is intermediate, the book helps to overcome creative crisis and offers a ton of useful tips to inspire growth for anyone who has already at least a little practice with watercolor.
There is some really original content, also sections (composition, colors, etc.) useful also for other techniques.
I really enjoyed this book, I've found it very informative. I liked also the layout, and of course the beautiful artwork of the author.

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3.5/5 stars.

This is a great book for watercolourists who want more information and maybe some inspiration about the craft. This book can easily overload a beginner watercolourists (also not the main demographic) with all the reading and information it contains but the step-by-step examples could still be useful. I will recommend this book to those looking at growing their landscape paintings but I don't think it is the right book for painters if other subjects (portraits, botanical studies, genre,...) unless they are specifically looking for explanations of some of the fundamentals in this book.

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The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook-Keep Painting!: A Treasury of Tips to Inspire Your Watercolor Painting Adventure by Gordon MacKenzie is just fabulous!
This was a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary.
This is such a delightful and helpful book! There are so many tips and techniques in here that I would never have thought to try. Even different was to compose the picture, ways to ground the picture, points of view, different ways to choose colors for your paintings, gradations and reversals, working with values, negative painting, atmosphere, making small people, changing the season of your painting, and so much more. There are so many pictures on each page and some step by steps. A great book! It is on my wish list! There are cute little cartoon characters along the way that also describe things and they are so cute, what a hoot!

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