Creating Watercolor Landscapes Using Photographs [Hardcover]

Donald W. Patterson (Author), ISA Barnett (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

Patterson teaches artists how to carefully shoot, select and edit their photos to create strong compositions in their watercolor paintings.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: North Light Books (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891349731
• ISBN-13: 978-0891349730
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,025,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A keeper, July 25, 2000

By 

Tobi Liedes-Bell (Worland, WY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating Watercolor Landscapes Using Photographs (Hardcover)

Every so often, you check out a book at the library, and turn right around and buy it for yourself. This is one such book. For those of us who paint from photos, this book is a must to have. The illustrations are crisp and the steps clear and easy to follow. From thumbnail sketch to final brush stroke, Mr. Patterson demonstrates how to create a vibrant painting from a ho-hum photo, and how to combine photos for the most impact. What a find!

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watercolor Wonders, June 20, 2000

By 

M. Ballard (Phoenixville, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creating Watercolor Landscapes Using Photographs (Hardcover)

Usually, skilled people are able to just do and not explain how they do - Mr. Patterson is an exception. In great detail, this book acts as a brilliant text for anyone interested in watercolor painting from the devoted student to the those with casual interest. Beyond the "how to" aspects, Mr. Patterson has been generous enough to include several plates of his own beautiful paintings - indeed, his technique works!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars improve workflow and composition analysis, September 21, 2007

By 

Faussone Valentina "Black is no color for sci... (Turin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Creating Watercolor Landscapes Using Photographs (Hardcover)

The book is a must for landscape painters and, in my opinion, is worthy for every other watercolor painter.

It's plainly explained, it has a number of helpful examples and covers different subejcts you will have to work out in every kind of watercolor painting.

One of the must important is how to look trough the camera to get your subject and not just to shoot what by chance is in front of you.

Another very good point is the analysis of when and where the camera can improve your workflow helping your creativity, but never replacing it.

Last, but not least, it has a very good analysis of how to compose what you see until you are sure it really is your subject: the one.

The book has full explanation of different techniques and concerns different issues of subject composition. It's not just a series of lonely landscape of mountains and some houses, with no living being.

Don Patterson teaches you how to seamlessly integrate animals and human beings presence in to the whole meaning your subject.

The only backdraw is that the book is not the "art academy kind": it doesn't teach you a painting method and then how to apply it to landscape painting. It assumes that you are a landscape painter fully knowing what you are doing.

In that sense I higly reccommend it along with David Bellamy's "Watercolour Landscapes Course" that has more the academic style.