The Urban Sketching Handbook Working with Color: Techniques for Using Watercolor and Color Media on the Go (Volume 7) (Urban Sketching Handbooks, 7)
Original price was: $17.99.$10.19Current price is: $10.19.
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Expert watercolorist, illustrator, instructor, and co-founder of Urban Sketchers Montreal Shari Blaukopf shares her essential color tips about color-water ratio, achieving bold color, avoiding muddy washes, painting in layers, and using wet-in-wet techniques.
This essential handbook covers:
- supplies and materials
- sample color palettes
- color mixing
- using limited palettes
- monochrome sketches
- the power of complementary colors
- using evocative, expressive color
With a focus on using watercolor with greater confidence and knowledge, the book also delves into pencil and ink and watersoluble pencils.
The instructional text is enhanced with stunning watercolor illustrations by the author and other expert urban sketchers from beautiful locations around the globe. The illustrations include examples of color swatches showing value; mixing; illustrations of complementary, analogous, and neutral color schemes; and sample galleries.
Working with Color is an indispensable guide for on-location artists looking to expand and strengthen their expressive use of color.
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509 reviews for The Urban Sketching Handbook Working with Color: Techniques for Using Watercolor and Color Media on the Go (Volume 7) (Urban Sketching Handbooks, 7)
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Original price was: $17.99.$10.19Current price is: $10.19.
Tried n True –
If you want a compact, easy to understand booklet to help guide you with sketching and water color, this is perfect for you! I had an architecture friend recommend this book to help me learn!
Kristine –
The book is fine and I love Shari Blaukopf, and she is why I order this one. But, I have 3 previous books in this series and they are bound very well with a semi stiff cover and an elastic band. This book (and now I see from more closely examining the images of subsequent books in the series) is bound much more cheaply. So typical of the world we live in now were its all about maximizing profits. That said I could be wrong and they received a bunch of negative feedback on the previous more robust covers but I kinda doubt it. Unfortunately I probably won’t buy anymore of the books in this series just to punish the publisher for being cheap.
John C. Gilliland –
This little book gives you tons of ideas and techniques for using color effectively, particularly in watercolor. An especially nice feature is that, for each pictured work of art, it tells you SPECIFICALLY what kind of paper or surface the artist used — brand name, type of surface, and texture details are usually included.
If you work with watercolor, you know how IMPORTANT that is, and also how rarely art instruction books give you the details on type of paper! Thanks to the author, excellent instructor Shari Blaukopf, for including those details!
NewtonsLawPreserved –
The images are pixilated and the text os very light and shaded in most pages. It drains the eye. It feels like a fake low quality re-print of the original book.
Other than that, the actual content is not bad.
Heidi H –
Its a wonderful buy … the artist explains the colors so well.
ssrees –
This is an excellent book. In fact it is the book that I have been looking for for a very long time. It is filled with practical, immediately useable advice in a way that I have not seen in any other book.
I have followed Shari Blaukopf’s blog for some time now and have always been struck by the striking compositions and beautiful, well organised colour choices in her work. Each of the paintings in this book merits close examination. There is a lot to learn from them. My own particular favourite among many is the one on page 71, a sober winter scene.
If you wish to learn how to produce sketches and paintings that are organised to have maximum impact, this is the book for you whether you are a beginner or an experienced artist. It already has its place in my sketching pack and is regularly referred to.
Trevor Travis –
Great to learn about water colours, mixing and application. Just what I was looking for and needed.
Catherine Moore –
I preordered this book in August when Shari announced it on her blog. Shari has two wonderful classes on Bluprint that started my foray into watercolor sketching. I have also followed her blog for a couple of years and was delighted when I learned that she had written a book on color. What I most wanted to know more about was her mixes and I was excited to see that she shares a great deal about her green mixes, shadow mixes, neutrals, etc. I am a landscape painter living in a tropical setting, so tackling those walls of green have been a challenge and I can’t wait to experiment with some of these new mixes.
The basic tools you pack in your sketch bag are after all the foundation of any work that you do. I don’t think you can truly create the depth of color that I see in her work with hard cakes of watercolor. The big take away here is that Shari uses tube paints in her palette, and the fresher the better. When I look back over my sketchbooks, I can always pinpoint the days when I refilled the pans with fresh paint. There is more detail about the specific brands she uses on her blog. One color mentioned in the book is Forest Green by Sennelier. This is a beautiful green that I would not do without, and because it is honey-based it never dries out in my palette.
Shari recommends a couple of travel brushes over a water brush. If you are working in a small sketchbook you might get away with using a water brush. I work in 8×5″ or larger watercolor journals and to get a beautiful sky wash I like a mop brush loaded with lots of juicy paint. When you are working en plein air, paint dries much faster and if you are working with a small brush that does not hold enough water, you are going to get a lot of fiddly little brush strokes that dry on the paper before you’ve even finished laying in your sky or other large shapes.
How you find this book depends a lot on your expectations. This book surpassed mine. There is a lot of very useful information to be had in this book and for the price I don’t think there is a better value.
Catherine Moore –
This book is under rated if it gets below 4 stars. What I like about this book: It is small in size, very convenient for travel, full of samples of artists’ sketches/paintings/studies from their sketch books which is a great way to direct or introduce me to other talented artists (AND the feature artist-commentator Shari Blaukopf herself is an exceptional talent, the book is loaded with her work too). I love artist’s sketch books: you get to see what they see at the time of creation; you see the strokes, the mistakes, the corrections, change of mind–it’s thoughts animated in the work. I love sketch books more than the finish painting. A sketch is the journey. I have a number of these small series of sketch books. Two I didn’t like, the others, like this one, I really enjoy. This book is not a “How to” monograph; there are a few pages and discussions of techniques and such, but it really is a compilation of many different artists work bundle into one book. It has a few blank pages for you to sketch. Another little thoughtful note, is the attached stretch band used to keep the book close when travelling so pages don’t get crinkled. Novel ideas that add to the charm. I will be checking out some of the artists featured, and hopefully they have sketch books of their own to share. I think there is a big market for artist’s-sketch-book books.
COMPLAINT (not about the book but about the ‘liners’)
[What the heck is going on with those one/two liners! They are NOT review but a waste of time and space. The above is a review not the crap one liner tweets–which say nothing! I don’t bother reading the ‘liners’ and I don’t buy products that do not have REAL reviews! The reviews have gone to pots. AMAZON, once the REAL reviews go, no point shopping in your flat, one dimension world–I’d go back to 3D live shopping–except for books, Amazon still has the best prices for books.]
Amazon Customer –
Simply said: all the books in this series are most interesting and can be highly recommended!