Exploring Watercolor: Creative Exercises and Techniques for Watercolor and Mixed Media

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Overview


What if... instead of waiting for the big idea," you begin a painting by dropping beautiful color onto your paper and seeing where it takes you?
What if... you paint with a leaf (or a sponge, or a string) instead of a brush?
What if... you start painting not on a blank sheet, but overtop an abstract acrylic background?

Exploring Watercolor is a book full of fresh perspectives, open doors, and ...

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More About This Book

Overview


What if... instead of waiting for the big idea," you begin a painting by dropping beautiful color onto your paper and seeing where it takes you?
What if... you paint with a leaf (or a sponge, or a string) instead of a brush?
What if... you start painting not on a blank sheet, but overtop an abstract acrylic background?

Exploring Watercolor is a book full of fresh perspectives, open doors, and creativity-expanding "what-ifs" to help take your work to the next level. Discover new ways to get expressive with color, ideas for using nature's patterns and motifs to inspire enticing designs, how to expand your repertoire and unleash your creativity by experimenting with freeform collages, found imagery and other innovative techniques.

Inside you'll find:

  • 22 open-ended, step-by-step demonstrations designed so you can do them over and over again, using various combinations of colors, papers and techniques for a different result every time.
  • 9 exercises illustrating expressive ways to put paint to paper
  • A fun and inspiring sampler of texture-making techniques&#151including printing methods, resists, sprinkling, spattering, stencils and "paper torture"&#151for paintings that sing with vitality.
Wherever you are as an artist, this hands-on guide will help you master the watercolor medium, develop your individual style, and move beyond a literal rendering of your subject matter to a more meaningful and memorable interpretation that expresses your unique vision. So let go of your self-imposed limits, play with different ways of painting, and&#151above all&#151paint with passion and joy!"
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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Groves's motto for this book, meant for experienced watercolorists eager to take their work to new creative levels, is: "Paint what you feel, not just what you see, and you'll begin to see the world in a different light." It contains experiments with freeform collages, found imagery, and multidimensional techniques. As Groves demonstrates, one can paint with a leaf (or a sponge, or a string) instead of with a brush; further, a painting can begin, not on a blank sheet, but over an abstract acrylic background. A fun sampler of techniques for the aspiring amateur (who might also like Lee Boynton and Linda Gottlieb's Painting the Impressionist Watercolor); recommended for public libraries.


—Daniel Lombardo
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781581808742
  • Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
  • Publication date: 8/20/2007
  • Pages: 144
  • Sales rank: 772,206
  • Product dimensions: 8.80 (w) x 10.80 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author


Elizabeth Groves has studied with numerous nationally known artists across the country. Her work has been exhibited in several US cities, won dozens of awards and can be found in many private collections. She has been on the board of directors of many arts societies, including the Woodlands Art League in Houston of which she was a founding member and president. She was president of the Alamo-Danville Artists' Association for the 1987-88 term of office. She teaches watercolor and oil workshops and private lessons and lives in Alamo, CA.
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