Ebook Everyday Watercolor Learn to Paint Watercolor in 30 Days Jenna Rainey Books

Product details Paperback 224 pages Publisher Watson-Guptill; Reprint edition (October 10, 2017) Language English ISBN-10 0399579729

Everyday Watercolor Learn to Paint Watercolor in 30 Days Jenna Rainey Books Reviews

• "Everyday Watercolor" is a how-to for those who want to learn Rainey's bleed-painting watercolor style. In this technique, you paint in the darkest part, then use clean water to wet the lighter areas, and a final stroke joins the two to create a bleed of the dark into the wet areas. She claims you can control the process, but I found her hints about this so vague it was just a matter of trying different things until I liked what I was getting.
  
  Each lesson lasted between 30-90 minutes, with the first few lessons being shortest. In the lessons, you learn how to paint various leaves, flowers (roses, paradise flower), plants (trees, cacti), fruit (papaya, dragon fruit), animals (chickens, hummingbird, toucan, elephant, macaw), and several landscape or collage-like paintings using these objects.
  
  The book is aimed at complete beginners to watercolor, but she wants you to buy expensive, professional-quality watercolor paper, paints, and brushes. I really liked the idea of teaching the basics (color theory, basic strokes for round brushes, etc.) during actual painting practice, but I think a complete beginner would find the book confusing and frustrating at times.
  
  Some examples On page 13, she tells you to include both warm and cool colors without explaining these new terms (until a later lesson). The illustrations often had confusing subtitles, like two swatches of green paint with "Winsor Green + Lemon Yellow Deep" under them. The way the text was placed, I initially thought one swatch was supposed to be the green and the other the yellow rather than two greens that you can make using those two paints. She frequently urged "add lots of water," leaving it mostly up to the reader to figure out how to keep the paint from escaping the desired bounds. As her technique requires "lots of water" yet "not too much," more advise on this from the very beginning would have been useful to a complete beginner.
  
  However, artists who are more used to the runaway tenancy of watercolor will probably turn out some nice finished lessons. As I have that much experience, I did turn out some nice results. However, I found deliberately courting runaway paint and unpredictable results day after day stressful rather than relaxing.
  
  I received this book as a free review copy from the publisher through Blogging for Books.
• If you don't want to read the stuff below, the summary if you bought this book, disregard the supplies recommendation. You will waste money for no good reason.
  
  I guess the reason why this book gained a lot of popularity is that #everydaywatercolor hashtag on instagram. This is how I got there, too. I also guess for most readers it is the first guide for watercolors, hence positive reviews. The author I self-taught, I get it, but some of the things she writes do not stand even a brief google check
  
  1. "Color theory" it gives is plain wrong. Red-yellow-blue is not a "primary palette", cyan-magenta-yellow is. RBY "theory" was left behind in 19th century.
  2. Pigment series and quality. The author is very contemptuous about "student grade" watercolors and "hues", and seems to imply that the series number on the tube somehow corresponds to the overall quality of a paint. This is just wrong. First, the author herself mixes pigments a lot (obviously), unconcerned with "muddiness". Second, the tube number has nothing to do with quality -- only with the cost to produce. The author herself uses "Opera Rose", which is series 2, but has the worst possible permanence ranking (B). Third, no need to shy off student palettes. I started with a Cotman set by Winsdor and Newton. They are good, you just won't get any expensive pigments there, like violets and pinks.
  
  And this brings me to the main point this book can make you waste a lot of money.
  
  Of course, when you want to commit to 30-day marathon, you want to have all supplies on hand. The book does not give a definite list of supplies, but has a lot of recommendations and "I use those" kind of stuff, which can be misguiding for a complete beginner. For example, in recommendations she lists a round brush #16, which is very expensive (because it is big!). It is used only in the last couple of exercises to add background wash. A much-cheaper 1 in flat brush will do the job, and even round #6 will work in a pinch. And I can go on and on like that.
• I am in love with this book!!!!! I haven’t finished it yet, but I know I’ll go through it multiple times.
  
  I have been interested in learning how to watercolor for several years now. I had some time on my hands so I ordered the Everyday Watercolor book because it seemed easy to follow and understand. I’m so glad I did! The exercises are simple, but for beginners it’s perfect, it breaks down technique in the most conventional way. I attached some photos from one of the first exercises, I haven’t purchased actual watercolor paper yet because I’m still learning, so the page I practiced on is a bit wrinkled, but either way the guide is easy to follow and helps even the most inexperienced artist be creative.
  
  I can’t think of any negatives for this text other than it focuses primarily on floral patterns; I’m not super into botanical art. It’s still a great place to start though, so I won’t complain.