So yesterday afternoon, my husband and I were over at Hobby Lobby. Hubs likes to go there for miniature painting supplies, and I like to tag along because, even though they don't have anything for potters, it's still fun wander the aisles.
So, I'm wandering the aisles when I come across the "how to draw/paint/whatever" books. I don't like these books. Before I went to art college, I actually picked up one or 2 of these dumb books. What I found was they taught you how to recreate a specific, simple painting.... and not much else. You learned zilch. But I spotted a
rather thick book like this:
As you now know,
I have made some watercolor paintings. It was a fun and interesting experience, but I felt I never really got anywhere with watercolors because, well, I didn't know much about watercolors. One of SAIC's major failings is that they don't talk about technique a lot. Oh, they'll tell you what pallete colors
Homer used for his famous paintings, but they seem to completely forget the basics. Things like: what kind of paper is best for your watercolor project... what brushes are best for your paints... that sort of thing. So what would happen is I'd make a painting, and like it, but have no idea how I managed to do it because I didn't know basic technique.
So you can see why I was impressed when I started flipping through the first few pages and the first thing I found was a comprehensive list of popular watercolor paper companies, what kinds of papers they make, and the strengths and weaknesses of each paper. WOW. I ponied up some cash and took the book home with me. That page alone was worth $25 in my eyes.
And boy is it worth even more. I poured through the first 100 pages that day. This book is actually a collection of a few watercolor books from several artists:
Donald Clegg,
Mark & Mary Willenbrink,
Pat Weaver,
Betty Carr,
Joe Garcia,
Linda L. Moyer,
Penny Soto, and
Jan Fabian Wallake. It has simple exercises to help you master techniques and ideas on how to use them effectively, as well as pages describing problems you might have while painting a picture, and how to keep that from happening in the future.
After I go through the entire book once, I might actually go back and run through the exercises -- they're structured well enough that I feel like I'd actually learn something by doing them (well most of them, anyway. There are a couple of "draw 1 and 2 point perspective" pages that make me roll my eyes a bit). We'll see what happens.
