Loose and Lively Flowers in Watercolour, Inks & Mixed Media
$39.99
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Description
This stunning book is packed with practical mixed-media techniques to bring your watercolour flower paintings to life! Learn to paint vibrant, expressive watercolour flowers - discover practical advice for loosening up, inspiring ideas for composition and artist tips for dynamic results.
Learn the secret to vibrant, expressive watercolor flowers – discover practical advice for loosening up, inspiring ideas for composition and artist tips for dynamic results.
This stunning book is packed with practical mixed-media techniques to bring your watercolor flower paintings to life!
Jo Allsopp’s watercolor flowers blossom with juicy, expressive paint strokes and vibrant, splashy colours. Relaxed and contemporary, this inspiring guide is designed to encourage those new to painting or looking to loosen up their style, and includes Jo’s top 10 tips for painting in a loose and lively way: from simplifying and embracing backruns to involving the background and just getting a bit messy! Inside you’ll also discover:
Tips on how to paint any flowers you want: from life, arranged as a still life, or from photographs.
3 complete step-by-step projects painted in pure watercolor: striking tulips, cheerful daffodils and dreamy bluebells.
24 short, practical mixed-media exercises, which show how to move beyond watercolor with mixed media such as acrylic ink, black art pens, metallic powders and some gold leaf. All are explored and explained to show the effects that can be achieved – and when and how to best use them for sumptuous results.
First aid for flowers: not everything goes according to plan, so find out how you can potentially improve a piece by thinking outside the box (after all, even the ‘experts’ can – and do – get things wrong!).
A range of stunning floral subjects from around the world, including popular favourites such as roses, poppies and orchids. Along with the flowers, some of the paintings incorporate associated insect pollinators and wildlife including ladybirds, bumblebees, butterflies, dragonflies and a greenfinch.
Reviews
There are times where we all wish to loosen up our painting, this book certainly does explore painting flowers loosely. Jo Allsopp uses dynamic brush strokes and vibrant, splashy colours to give loose, expressive results.
As always when reading any book on watercolour techniques, I am constantly thinking, 'how can I apply this to painting on silk'? Surprisingly, I can translate many of the methods described here to silk.
There are step by step projects to explore, plus numerous short, practical exercises incorporating mixed media, such as acrylic ink; watercolour pencils; metallic leaf and bronzing powder. I have used acrylic inks on silk with striking results. For watercolour pencils, think Inktense pencils, perfect on silk. Metallic leaf gives a painting highlights and richness, I loved using this but not tried bronzing powder, maybe an experiment is called for?
There is lots of detailed instruction on how to paint flowers loosely, resulting in fluid abstract paintings. A wide variety of flowers are illustrated giving a new and exciting approach.
I particularly like the section headed 'Top Ten Tips' beginning with 'Simplify', 'Dare to go darker' and ending with 'Splash!'. Each heading making you think, I must try that.
Certainly, if you want your painting to go in a new direction, this is the book for you. Probably the most thought provoking watercolour book I have read in a very long time. -- Margaret Dunning * Guild of Silk Painters *
