Everyday Watercolor: Learn to Paint Watercolor in 30 Days Paperback – October 10, 2017

More reading than practice painting but well written and informative

Great instructions and illustrations! Fun to learn the water color techniques.

Jenna Rainey is a top notch watercolor artist. Self taught, her contemporary designs and instructions are easy to follow and this book is great tool for any beginner or a seasoned artist alike These thick, sturdy pages are easy to follow and go in depth,creating next steps to use doing with his to hold your brushes, along with how to mix colorsThanks for such a great product at an amazing price. I can't wait to delve into it full steam ahead!

Jenna Rainey has created a beautiful book with 30 lessons to be done in 30 days supposedly aimed at beginners. I am a true beginner, with only minor art experience. The lessons become increasingly complex and require more drawing expertise than I expected. Reading the text to complete each lesson requires a lot of concentration, patience, and re-reading. Here are my pluses and minuses. I am learning a lot and getting a lot of gratification from finished pieces from each lesson, but I also have many frustrations and have had to seek out other resources to fill in the blanks. I decided to move on to another teacher, stopping at Day 23. Only 1 of the remaining 7 lessons teaches something new. The rest have complex, time-consuming drawings with many layers that need to dry. They felt like busy work to me.Pros:The book is beautifully laid out with good instructions and great illustrations.The book teaches many of the basic techniques.She does a fairly decent job of breaking down the tasks to complete each painting.I really like having a lesson to do every day and the way that the skills build on each other.Cons:The author does not give enough information about how to mix colors. Sometimes she will simply say to mix up the following color pallette without saying how much of one color to use or what kind of ratio of water with paint. She is often asking a newbie to complete a very complex task without much guidance.She does not tell you enough about the color names she is using.The author has a rather "feminine" style of mostly plants and flowers and her color preferences also feminine with pinks and pastels.I had to search for other peoples' videos to learn how much water to put on my brush and how much water to mix with my paints.When the author wrote this book, she was using one brand of paints (Windsor Newton), but in the last year or two, she has changed to a different brand with which she obviously has some kind of financial deal. This means that her videos on making a color wheel and using colors will be useless if, like me, you took her advice from the book and bought Windsor Newton paints.In the beginning of the book she has you make a light to dark value swatch. This is way beyond the skill level of somebody who has never used watercolors before. I was really annoyed at this instruction at this early point. It seems to me that she should have beta tested her lessons on true beginners.In conclusion, I am enjoying the book, learning a lot from it, but it can be frustrating and is not sufficient as my only resource to learn basic watercolor strategies and skills.

I've learned more from this book than any other. She takes you from very basic strokes, color choice and mixing, to very complex pieces. Great book and great teacher.

Not an intro to art/sketching/painting in general. This is a bare beginner intro to how to use watercolor. The presumption is that you will find basic general instruction elsewhere or that you already have it. Paint every day with the lessons, and in 30 days you will understand how watercolor paint works.You may or may not want to frame your lesson work. Every lesson teaches you more and more about paint and water…brushes and pressure…paper and practice.There is a review here… more than one in fact where people complain “but I don’t want to paint a papaya!” The lesson, on day 11 is “varied hue blending” not “perfect your papaya in six easy steps…someone complained about the next lesson because cactus is apparently beneath them… that is a super basic lesson on casting a very simple shadow. Someone else was angry that there was nonspecific lesson on flowers. Jenna has an additional book called “watercolor flowers, that is very in depth but also meant to be technique and practice.People complain that Jenna is teaching her own style. Lol. Okay.If you have never taken an art class before, you might not want to go right to paint. Maybe start with the classic “drawing on the right side of the brain” and then use this to learn how watercolor works… and use what you learn from both to begin to accomplish novice composition.My wife, who loves to paint, but has no desire to actually learn, does adult paint by number kits and is super content.I highly recommend this book, and Jenna’s tutorials on YouTube. Everything she does is accomplishable… that’s a great way to teach.

I have been wanting to start my watercolor/art journey for years. This book is well structured and easy to follow. I am currently on day 7 and have been painting for an hour a day minimum. Would recommend getting a good set of brushes along with the book. Th author also has a Amazon page where she recommends materials from her book. I am working on buying a couple of good brushes as the ones I own are fraying. I look forward to buying her other books once I master the techniques in this book.