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Summary: Dobie's guidelines make you colors sing!
Review: The most helpful book I have read. Advice on which colors to use to set up a palette that does make your watercolors vibrant and alive. Jeanne gives you specific directions about transparent, staining and opaque watercolors in a way that makes one remember it. The book is full of wonderful color charts and examples of paintings. She is a rare find in that she is able to turn out gorgeous paintings and teach how to do it as well. Jeanne, when are you going to put out some videos? I want to SEE you paint!
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Summary: Must-Read for any watercolorist
Review: The talented Jeanne Dobie does a lot of her work in the sun-drenched Florida Keys. While there are many good books on color and pigment, Dobie explains how light in a painting scene shifts moment by moment and how you have to be ready to capture that brilliant moment with the right palette.The book gives advice on which colors to put in a limited palette for brilliance. (As anyone who has done watercolor even for a short time knows, there are hundreds of colors available, but when you MIX them, sometimes you get a flat, dull result that looks like mud on the paper.) Choosing a limited and CORRECT palette for the painting you are going to do is one of the most critical steps after creating the composition. Dobie includes important facts about which paints stain the paper (and cannot be lifted up again), which are transparent and can be used as a wash or glaze, and which paints are opaque. And if you follow the "purist" rule of no white paint, you learn how to leave the whites (use the paper for brilliant whites) and no black paint (which causes a visual hole in the paper.) Instead, Dobie shows the student painter how dark colors like brown or a visual black can be mixed that still look luminous and interesting on the paper. This is a very difficult technique to master--shadow detail can make or break a painting. I disagree with one of her points, however, on mixing greens. While it is true that green pigments direct from the tube are far more brilliant and transparent than any you can mix, I find certain mixed greens from yellows and blues to be subtle for shadowed foliage, and sometimes the pure paint greens are jarring and unnatural to me. I tried to follow this "use unmixed" greens rule, and I end up mixing mine anyway, though I own many shades of green paints. Of course, the best part of the book are the paintings. These are inspiring to the reader, but this author can also write and explain herself well. This book should be a standard on any watercolorist's shelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Color Theory for Watercolorists
Review: This book deals with color theory for watercolorists, particularly the use of a limited palette originated and championed by the author. There is little or no discussion of basics such as brushes, paper, etc.
Artists looking to reduce the number of pigments on their palette while keeping a full range of color will find the author's ideas and color theory of interest.
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Summary: Best book on color
Review: This book taught me how to use color in a way that improved my paintings tremendously. I HIGHLY recommend it. Get a watercolor sketchbook and start mixing colors for a color reference. These colors are luminous. Doing the lessons had been fun and taught me a lot about the knowledge experienced painters have. Maybe not for the rank beginner but certainly for someone who is ready to move to the next level or who does not understand why their paintings seem to be dull.
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Summary: Making Color Sing
Review: This has become one of the most valuable watercolor reference books I've ever used. Beautifully illustrated and clearly explained by an artist with timeless technique and an elegantly sensitive style. No wasted text here! I've worn it out and am buying my second copy!
Rating:
Summary: Making Color Sing
Review: WOW ! This book is the bible of color theory for watercolorists.
The most informative book ever to help you understand how colors react when placed side by side in a painting. Also esplains clearly about transpartent and opaque pigments.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful but flawed color reproduction
Review: Yes, Dobie's suggestions on how to approach choosing and using colors are inspiring and useful. However, at least in my copy, in many of the illustrations colors were simply not reproduced accurately. In another book this might not be quite so frustrating. But in many places, rather than making the text more explicit she leaves it to the example to make her point. In those cases I sometimes found it difficult to grasp what she meant. Maybe for her next book she should seek another publisher, or at least a different printer.
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