Water-soluble colored pencils are portable, versatile and much more forgiving than traditional watercolors, yet many artists have only just begun to tap into this medium's creative potential. This book explores the amazing possibilities of watercolor pencils, providing artists with basic instruction for taking full advantage of them in their artwork. Beginning with an overview of necessary materials and basic techniques, artists will learn from simple mini demos how to mix colors, create washes, layer colors and more. Artists will then see how these painting techniques are employed to capture a variety of popular subjects, including landscapes, flowers, animals, water, people, skies, trees, bridges and buildings. The last chapter of the book demonstrates how to mix watercolor pencils with other mediums to create all kinds of new and interesting effects.
Cathy Johnson, sometimes known as Kate, has worked as a naturalist, writer, and freelance artist for the past 30 years, and was staff naturalist and contributing editor for Country Living magazine for 11 years. She is a contributing editor to the Artist's Magazine and Watercolor Magic and has had a regular column in Personal Journaling magazine, where she wrote on a subject she feels passionately about -- realizing the importance of creativity in our lives. She has written and illustrated -- her own work and that of others -- for a number of national magazines, including Science Digest, Harrowsmith Country Life, Sports Afield, Country Journal, Muzzlelader, Women's History, Early American Life, Sketchbook, Woodworker, Woman's Day, Threads, Mother Earth News, National Wildlife Magazine, Sierra and others. Her writing and artwork have been included in a number of nature anthologies and art books.
She has written and illustrated 29 books, and contributed to a number of others, working with a variety of national publishing houses. Those include North Light/F&W, Time/Life, Sierra Club, Random House, Scholastic, Globe Pequot Press, Gibbs-Smith Publisher, Tehabi, Van Nostrand Reinhold, Walker Publications, Prentice-Hall Press, Penguin, Stackpole and others.
Many of these books have been published in editions overseas, as well, in Russia, Japan, Holland, France and England.
In 1993, she founded her own small publishing company, Graphics/Fine Arts Press, which primarily offers books of interest to the reenacting community or others interested in history and material culture.
Her paintings are included in a number of private and corporate collections in this country and abroad, including Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City, MO; F&W Publications/North Light Books, Cincinnati, OH; Early American Life Magazine, Harrisburg, PA; The Kansas City Life Insurance Co., Kansas City, MO; and Newcomers Funeral Home, Kansas City, MO.
Her original jewelry has also found its way overseas, to Scotland and Great Britain, and is included in the Images of the Archetype Collection in Glasgow, Scotland..
Her green man and fantasy paintings and sculptures are currently in a one-woman show online at http://www.greenmanreview.com/gallery-kate/index.html.
She is a longtime member of the Author's Guild and the Costume Society of America. She was chosen Conservation Communicator of the Year by the Burroughs Audubon Society in l987, and won the Thorpe Menn Award for Creative Writing (AAUW) for The Naturalist's Cabin; Constructing the Dream (Viking Penguin) in 1992.
Her website is http://cathyjohnson.info
