Title: Watercolor for the Artistically Undiscovered
Editors:John Cassidy, Thacher Hurd
Publisher: Klutz
Book and Access edition (1992)
Language: English
72 pages
This is a fabulous handbook/working book about watercolors for beginners. It comes with a middle-sized brush (number 5) and a set of 6 paints from Reeves (exactly as shown on the cover page picture). The author points out rightfully that if you have in the past used only five-and-dime watercolors, you will be very pleased with the Reeves paints.
There are 9 sections:
1. Introduction
2. Really Basic Watercolor Technique
3. Color Mixing
4. Using your Pencil
5. Washes
6. Light and Shadow
7. Perspective
8. Painting a Still Life
9. Tell a Story
I don't think this is for children only. There are good instructions for the adults who have never experimented with watercolors before. The information is presented in very big font and the instructions are easy to understand.
Yes there are many blank pages to let the reader paint but the paper is of very good quality so it did soak up the paint nicely without causing the paper to warp. If you run out of paint or paper, the last page of the book shows you where you can order more.
I let children aged 6 to 8 paint with this book and they all loved it. They were especially impressed by the paints which felt quite different from their usual Crayola watercolors. However, that age range is slightly too young because they would still need a lot of supervision. The recommended age is 9 to 12, but older children, and adults alike, can learn much from this book.
I showed the book to my friend who is teaching in elementary school and she liked the content very much. She has purchased one book to experiment herself and will suggest the book for her class. I would recommend this if you are very new to watercolor painting but not if you are already familiar with it already. In which case you would just waste your money because the information shown is very basic.
