The Bottom Line
If you’re someone who can’t resist a new colour, this approach is for you – the author has some 80 different colors in her palette. If you prefer mixing colours from a small range, stay away.
Pros
- How to combine and juxtapose colours for vibrancy
- Underpainting and overpainting techniques
Cons
- Author’s approach requires many different colours
- Pink used as a design feature overwhelms paintings
Description
- Hardcover book, 144 pages, ISBN 1-58180-215-3, publisher North Light Books www.nlbooks.com
- Chapter 1: A Professional Start – organising your paints, brushes, paper
- Chapter 2: Understanding Value – light, medium, and dark rather than actual colour
- Chapter 3: The Personalities of Colour – intensity, temperature, transparency, neutrals and more
- Chapter 4: Controlling Colour – applying washes, demonstrations; blending colour on the paper
- Chapter 5: Learning to Underpaint and Overpaint – with roses and portrait demonstrations
- Chapter 6: Lighting Effects – different types of light; backlighting and window light demos
- Chapter 7: Adding Colour to Shadows – with two demonstrations
- Chapter 8: Water reflections – with three demonstrations
Guide Review - Review: Painting Glowing Colors in Watercolor by Penny Soto
If you can’t resist a new colour, you’ll love this book as the author has some 80 different colours from various manufacturers in her palette. Following her approach, you’ll never have to justify buying a new colour again. If you’re a complete beginner, you’ll possibly find the information not quite detailed enough. For intermediate artists wanting to work on their skills, some of the chapters will reinforce what you already know and others suggest new approaches, particularly how to use colours straight from the tube and judging the character of a particular colour. In the demos the paintings are labelled so you know where a particular colour was used. I’d recommend looking at the book in a shop first rather than buying unseen online.
