Customer Reviews

Painting Watercolors That Sparkle with Life

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Having bought many watercolour books over the years and not getting far due to poor instructions I decided to paint in a more forgiving medium. Then I saw the cover of Cindy Agans book. I was blown away with the painting on the cover - it looked so realistic. I couldn't believe it was watercolour. So I decided to have one more go at watercolours. In this instance you can definately tell a book by its cover!. Cindy Agan has obviously put her heart and soul into her book - sharing all she has learned, by trial and error over many years (being self-taught) she holds nothing back from the reader. Her colour swatches, hints and tips alone are worth the price of the book. I've been able to follow all the demonstrations with ease. I am so pleased with my end results and feel confident to now paint portraits, animals, flowers, etc. This book is my 'Bible' - I love to read parts of it every day. I highly recommend this beautiful book. Cindy Agan - Thank you!! Please, please write another book a.s.a.p. You have brought joy to my life.

I have owned this book for over a year, and it is a mainstay for me, which I constantly refer back to again and again. The author is a tremendous teacher (and an inspiration with her beautiful work), and her approach is easy to understand in her step-by-step demonstrations. I therefore strongly disagree with Pricilla Goodwin's critique that this book was unhelpful, and left out essential steps in the painting process. You can tell by the many other critiques that readers have used her step-by-step process to paint a subject successfully for the very first time, and that says everything to me.
The author covers all of the challenging subjects in this book from fur to grass to flowers, to backgrounds, as well as covering techniques such as glazing, masking, and feathering among others. She also discusses the emotions an artist must deal with when facing criticism when presenting their work, which can be a tremendous challenge for many. I cannot think of a single point that the author did not cover in this well-thought-out book, and I have been painting and studying watercolour seriously for the past 6 years. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone who wants to achieve realism in their paintings. My only disclaimer is this: as with any book, you can buy it and let it sit on your shelf, and it won't do anything for you. That's usually when people blame the book instead of themselves for not achieving their desires of improvement. However, if you buy this book, read it, and practice from it you will be very pleased with the results you have achieved with the help of this gifted artist. I hope that we will see more books from Cindy Agan in the future!

Being entirely new to painting (I joined an Art Class in Sept2004) I bought this book in November and to my delight found the step by step instructions clear, concise, & totally comprehensive. My first project was to follow the demonstration of painting the Black Cat, which I adapted to copy a photo of Penny once a member of our family. When a friend of an artist saw it she exclaimed "You feel you can reach out and stroke the fur". This book has been so useful to me and is one I can refer to time and time again.

I first came across this book in my local library, I was fascinated with how realistic the paintings looked, but mainly how smooth they were. I had no idea that such effects could be achieved using watercolors.

The start of the book goes into great detail as to what equipment and colors are used, I found the color charts very useful since some of the names of colors were not known in my country, so I just took the book to my local art supplier and showed them the color I wanted.

My first attempt was a portrait. Even though I sometimes doubted one or two of the washes had to add, I stuck with the program and followed the examples to the letter, and it worked, I was amazed at the end result, especially since I'd never painted a portrait in my life before.

As a complete novice I found the examples easy to follow and the techniques used very useful, infact I refer to this book for tips when doing most of my paintings now.

I really can't recommend this book enough, even when I'm not painting I sometimes pick it up and read it for the feel good factor.

Let's see more from Cindy Agan.

On the recommendation of a friend, I read this book in hopes of expanding my experience painting into watercolor. Immediately, I could not believe the realism of Cindy's work! I found the concepts easy to understand and, as a first time watercolorer, was able to produce my own beautiful painting. This book was stunning visually and very helpful.

This is a really good book. The paintings are incredibly realistic, and the demonstrations are very good. It also has lots of basic information, like paints and palettes, and I found it to be very helpful. Highly recommended.

If your subject matter is pets, portraits and home scenes, Cindy Agan's "Painting Watercolors that Sparkle with Life" will be a valuable guide for how to render these subjects in transparent watercolor.

The book covers how to paint faces, especially children's faces in great detail, from sketching from photos to painting flesh tones. Pets are also discussed, from how to paint fur to making the most of a bad photo of a pet (the painter can get rid of those glowing night eyes that show up in flash photos of cats and dogs--the retinal lining of nocturnal animals flashes yellow or red and you as the painter can fix that!)

There is a section also on still life subjects of metal, glass and fabric and how to use masking. The demonstrations show the paintings in progress and you can see the author's sectional approach. She paints in detail section by section rather than over an entire area in layers of washes. By this I mean, the base of a crystal lamp would be painted in sectors from left to right rather than build up from the entire base with wash then darker detail. This is instructive.

One thing that is not dealt with; the tendency for paintings done from photographs (portraits) to look distorted or somehow odd. The camera does get a child or pet to stand still! That does help to get a good, realistic sketch, but I can always tell if a painting of a live subject is done from a photo. There is a sort of weird angle or other odd look to it that, as an artist, really bothers me. I can go into any gallery or look at someone's work and pretty much tell if a photo was used in studio. Not the least of which also is the rendering of the depth of field --the fuzziness of background subjects. While this is attractive in some paintings, again, you get a distorted look. If you like this look in your paintings, I'd say it's fine, go for it. But for me, I have to find ways to make photographs in studio look less "studio-ized." I use several photos to get a variation in the pose, as if the model were moving. If you don't sketch from life, at least some of the time, you will have this problem. This is the only issue I have with this book and for you, it may be no issue at all.

Great reference for the painter of realism and ultra-realism in water media.

I was looking for a book on how to do watercolor portraits, and I came across the cover of this book, whose realism drew me in. I bought the book at an extremely reduced rate, although it is worth every penny of its original price. The author/artist does incredible work. She included many color pallets, which are quite helpful, and she shows the steps she went through to create some of her paintings. This was EXACTLY the kind of book I was looking for.

This book is fine with her final paintings but the techniques are not in detail at all. It only takes you to a point which is critical and stops short. Its like she doesn't want to give you her secrets. I was very sorry I purchased this book and there are many others better to put in your library. reader Tn