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Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor (learn to create color palettes, with a guide to materials, preparation, and techniques; includes 14 practices, for beginners and experts) Paperback – April 21, 2015

by Mimi Robinson (Author)

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Whenever we first encounter a new place, whether landscape or cityscape, one of the most immediate and powerful sensations comes from its colors, or the palette of colors, which profoundly influence our reaction to and sense of a space. In Local Color, designer and educator Mimi Robinson teaches us not only how to see the colors around us but also how to capture and record them in watercolor. Regardless of your level of expertise, Robinson will quickly have you creating personal memories of time, travel, and place through a series of self-guided exercises and illustrated examples.

Print length

128 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Princeton Architectural Press
Publication date

April 21, 2015
Dimensions

7.25 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1616892978
ISBN-13

978-1616892975
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Editorial Reviews

Review

I just received "Local Color, Observing Place through Watercolors", and was completely engrossed. It's a thoughtful, beautiful and inspiring book.
I've often noticed colors and patterns as I hike and travel and I'm excited to try to make palettes and art based on your exercises. Thank you for putting your design, and yourself, out into the world and being such as inspiration for me.

-MarilynHartinow

I love your book! You present this concept insuch a beautiful and inspiring way. Local Color is brilliant!  I have beenkeeping a watercolor sketchbook since August 2013   Thank you, I really think this bookwill help me to understand color in a unique way, and increase my skills inchoosing colors as a watercolorist. Plus, it looks like soooo much fun.  

-Janis Behm

I love Mimi Robinson's new book, LOCAL COLOR. It encourages me to keep a journal, express myself artfully and look much more closely and appreciatively at the beautiful world around me! Not to mention, LOCAL COLOR has meplanning and dreaming about where to set up my watercolors next!

LOCALCOLOR evokes the feelings, moods of a place and time so beautifully I cantransport myself wherever Mimi Robinson takes us in her examples. As a park ranger, I encourage people tosee the nuances of color and the influence of light, season, soil in ournatural surroundings or historic settings that makes each one a uniqueexperience. Now with LOCAL COLOR at hand, I can encourage people tomix this awareness with their own human associations, add Mimi's color tools tocreate a lasting memory that is in keeping with "make pictures, takememories, leave only footprints". Mimi's easily accessible method of helping us reach deeper to draw on the spirit and color of aplace rings true...even a novice like me can hardly wait to mix color andwater, look around...then paint! And share with others this beautiful way ofexperiencing the world.

--Mia Monroe, National Park ServiceRanger, Muir Woods, California

From the Author

I hope this book encourages you to see the world through the lens of color. Get out there and paint!

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton Architectural Press; Illustrated edition (April 21, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1616892978
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1616892975
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #577,620 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #712 in Graphic Design Color Use

Customer Reviews:
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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

94 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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Diana Young

Interested in how to look at a landscape in color, this is your book

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

I’m learning about color in painting and have to say this is superb as a lesson planning tool. Teaches how to see color in a landscape but can be utilized elsewhere. Highly recommend!

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2023

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A great book on color!

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Happy Reader

A fresh approach to seeing color

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2021

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Am enjoying using this book as a guide to a better understanding of color. Love doing the grids and experimenting with watercolor pencils as well as pan watercolors, layering them and mixing the two
together.

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Parka

Pleasant beautiful book on colours

Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2015

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Local Color is a relaxing book to read. The writeup is light and breezy. The pictures are lovely, watercolour swatches are pastel-like in colour scheme. It's the kind of book that you may like if you're also into books from Nigel Peake and Sara Midda.

This book from artist and designer Mimi Robinson invites you to slow down to observe familiar surroundings and record the colours that you see each day for inspiration. The pages are filled with mostly colour swatches created by Robinson with accompanying photographs to show what she saw. The swatches look wonderful. There are just a handful of paintings only.

There are some travel stories, actually they are more like descriptions, flowing descriptions of the colours of places and scenes Robinson has been to, seen and captured. Occasionally, there are some exercises and tips that gives you ideas on what you can do to create your own swatches, where to find inspiration or how to think about colours as a whole in your composition. Overall, the instructions are rather brief but they can be lengthy in actual practice.

Downside of the book is probably the brief instructions on colouring mixing. This book shows mainly swatches and there are only six pages on colour mixing. Not only that, swatches featured throughout the book aren't labeled with the pigments used. Perhaps, it's not that guided to push you to experiment colour mixing yourself. The book would have been more useful with more instructions and colour mixing recipes, even if it's just the name of the pigments.

All in all, it's an enjoyable book, recommended to those who like colours.

(See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

59 people found this helpful

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Wishbird

Looking at the world through watercolor...

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

Sometimes it's daunting to paint a landscape...it's a bit overwhelming to even begin...but in this book, you will see each piece of the puzzle by color, value and tone...the very subtle blues of a sky, the various shades available through mixing your own of greens, the earth tones of a desert or the blues, greens and grays of lakes and oceans....I own this as a book and on my KIndle, so I have reference and inspiration with me...a must for watercolor artists of all levels.

2 people found this helpful

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shannon delaney

Shannon R. Delaney of Rio Mar, Panama April 2015 early evening walk

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2015

Verified Purchase

After a beach walk on the pacific side of Panama, and some shell collecting, I was inspired to do a color palette and pull all of the tropical color out of the shells. I saw hues of fuchsia, pinks, grey and bright oranges and purples...I was curious by how the shell got their colors and learned that the species that live inside of them created the color based on the minerals in the sea. I was able to drop in and examine color values and shades, and experience the uniqueness of each shell

10 people found this helpful

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Caerus

Disappointed

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2015

Verified Purchase

Also think book is lovely to look at, but missed being valuable to me because of the lack of information of the PIGMENTS she uses in her palette, and mixes. She suggests using Winsor Newton, or Sennelier as good paints, well, I use mostly Daniel Smith. We all know the names of colors are not enough information and this designer/author could have made bit of extra effort to IDENTIFY all those beautiful colors, and mixes with PIGMENT NUMBERS. As the book is, it's like Sara Midda ( and I do LOVE Sara's watercolors) with larger pictures.
I'm disappointed, but not enough to give it two stars, more like two and one half.

16 people found this helpful

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Aeron M

A must for watercolorists.....

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

Mimi Robinson has a special way of looking at the world, and I want more of it! This lovely book showcases her amazing ability to break any scene down into color - a must for any artist, but especially watercolorists. Her paintings are lovely and ethereal, and I find myself flipping through this book often for inspiration.

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Top reviews from other countries

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Susan B

Really subtle and beautiful.

Reviewed in Canada on August 1, 2023

Verified Purchase

This is a book for those that love subtle variations and a different way to keep a memory of a special place. I really enjoy this book, it is softly beautiful.

Cliente Amazon

Great concept

Reviewed in Italy on February 15, 2023

Verified Purchase

Very useful concepts

Josivan da silva

Recebido.

Reviewed in Brazil on January 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

Lindo livro.

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satoritraveller

Prachtig boek, maar kaft laat los

Reviewed in the Netherlands on August 9, 2022

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Een prachtig boek met inspiratie om door kleur naar je (natuurlijke) omgeving te kijken, zowel thuis als op reis.

(Jammer genoeg liet de kaft al na een paar dagen los. Voor mij geen ramp, maar evengoed jammer).

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CEEHAA

Idee super, Ausführungen im Buch mangelhaft

Reviewed in Germany on June 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

Die Idee der "Local Colors" finde ich super, lassen sich leicht umsetzen und regen die Kreativität an. Ich kann mit dem Prinzip der Local Colors prima Fotos mit aquarellierten Colorcharts verbinden.

Was in dem Buch jedoch komplett zu kurz kommt, ist das "Wie". Es sind eigentlich fast nur Bilder der Künstler, Seite für Seite, es fehlen aber konkrete Anleitungen. Die Idee, das Buch hätte Potenzial, wenn es nicht eher wie ein "Portfolio" der Künstlerin anmuten ließe und stattdessen den Leser konkret anleiten würde: wie erreiche ich Mischungen analog zu den Fotos, wie gehe ich vor, was brauche ich dazu usw. Schade.

One person found this helpful

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Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor (learn to create color palettes, with a guide to materials, preparation, and techniques; includes 14 practices, for beginners and experts) Paperback – April 21, 2015

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