Watercolor Journeys

The author, an experienced painter and traveler, teaches you how to paint on the go through a mix of instruction, step-by-step demos, and real-life journal samples.

Take a journey with the master, Lian Quan Zhen! From landscapes and architecture to people and animals, Lian Quan Zhen has painted it all. Inside Chinese Watercolor Journeys with Lian Quan Zhen, you will see beautiful paintings in both the Chinese and Western styles. Filled with tips and stories, you'll learn about Lian's techniques and artistic journey. The large, colorful images will inspire you to take a journey of your own.

Learn to paint gorgeous watercolor flowers, houseplants, and arrangements with this inspiring guide that includes 30 step-by-step tutorials. Filled with lessons and daily exercises, this fun introduction to watercolor teaches beginner artists how to create their own botanical-inspired paintings. It covers everything from selecting paper, paint, and brushes to choosing a palette, blending colors, and adding dimension and detail. Once you’ve mastered the essential techniques, you’ll learn to paint cacti, popular houseplants, and individual flowers, and see how to combine these components into more complex compositions, including frames, wreaths, and colorful bouquets. Step-by-step tutorials, along with artist Eunice Sun’s expressive artwork, provides all the guidance and inspiration you’ll need to render small motifs, decorate a card, paint a charming still life, and more.

Many artists first learn to paint in watercolour. But this flexible, dynamic medium has an immediacy that is perfect for experimentation. Discover textures, applications, techniques, combinations of materials, and new ways of tackling the medium you love. Rub it, dab it, scratch it, scrunch it. Cut it, glue it, sew it and seal it. And above all, learn from what other people do! This little book is full of big ideas from contemporary artists to inspire you to think differently. With a new idea on every spread of the book, you will discover fresh ways of working with watercolour to create work that is original and exciting.

Features selections from the sketchbooks of forty artists, illustrators, and designers that capture their travels around the world in drawings and paintings.

We don't have to know what a painting is if we know how it makes us feel. A fun, fascinating survey of abstract art, Journeys to Abstraction offers a behind-the-scenes look at how contemporary artists break free from literal depiction to rejoice in the pure expressive power of color, line and texture. • 58 artists share 100 striking abstract paintings, along with the ideas, inspirations and diverse working processes behind them. • Covers a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional media and techniques, including watercolor, collage, acrylics, ink and more. • Four step-by-step demonstrations show how abstract pieces come together from start to finish. Discover how artists paint, pour, scrape, spray, carve, stamp, collage and otherwise build complex layers of texture and meaning. Painting with egg cartons, turning acrylic paints into shards of "stained glass," incorporating old "failed" paintings into fresh finished pieces...anything goes in abstract art! Marked by an inspiring freedom of form and content, this is a liberating book for any artist in search of new, dynamic forms of self-expression.

Finally! Artful watercolor painting for beginners! Yes, YOU can do it. YOU can create beautiful watercolor paintings--everything from florals to portraits to landscapes--even if you've never before worked with this exuberant, exciting medium. Fearless Watercolor for Beginners offers a unique, one-on-one workshop--with step-by-step demonstrations, exercises and bonus video content--that teaches you all the basics you need to get started (and then some)--and then promptly encourages you to break them! Inside you'll find: * 22 step-by-step demonstrations for basic techniques, techniques for adding texture, and mixed-media techniques for truly one-of-a-kind work * Dozens of easy-to-understand concepts, practical, meaningful tips and fun ideas you'll be eager to try * Links to exclusive demo videos, exercises and tools to round out and enhance your workshop experience Be bold! Be daring! Be FEARLESS!

Jean Haines' enthusiasm for watercolours burst through every page of this inspirational book that will guide you, step by step, to creating beautiful and unique paintings of your own, whatever your ability. Accomplished artist Jean Haines shares her passion for watercolours in this wonderfully practical book. Known for her exciting techniques and love of colour, Jean takes you on an inspirational painting journey on which you'll encounter, amongst other things, magical watercolour flow, glorious washes, sunbursts, and a magnificent 'hotting it up' finale. With her simple exercises, clear advice and easy-to-follow projects, Jean pushes the boundaries and will alter the way you think about watercolours and painting for ever. With a selection of popular subjects, including animals, landscapes, buildings, flowers and people, there is something for everyone here, whatever their artistic ability.