Customer Reviews

Watercolor Mixing: Twelve Hue Method: Getting the Wow Effect in your Paintings

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4 star:		(1)
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While this book does contain some information about mixing colors, this advice is fairly general. It does suggest using black or white for changing the saturation of your colors. This simplistic method is often disparaged in watercolor books. White is opaque, so many painters feel that you shouldn't use it anywhere in a watercolor, including for mixing, unless it can't be avoided. The strength of this book is the discussion of the various ways to choose color schemes for your painting. The illustrations are very useful in showing how these methods are used.

As an occassional painter this is the best practical color book I've seen out there. I tried many others including the Wilcox book (unusable and vague -- too hard) and Albers (too much theory.) My paintings immediately got better when I used this book. White and black are discussed and I now know how to use them well. It's not just for watercolorists like me, but I've also used it for my acrylics. It's a great book and I highly recommend it to any painters out there, like me.

The big negative is in Willard's explanations of how to neutralize saturated (bright ) colors. He recommends black!!! I think this neutralizes any of the book's positives, given that it is teaching color theory and this is the cardinal sin of colorists--using black to neutralize!!! For a much better, truly scientific and sensible explanation of using colors, try "Blue and Yellow Don't make Green," by Michael Wilcox--this is ground-breaking, easy to follow, and actually works, unlike Willard's book which will lead you astray. Nice paintings though.

Chris Willard is the best color theorist around. My paintings do have that "WOW" affect after using this book.