Painting Fresh Florals in Watercolor

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Summary: How to paint beautiful florals for any artistic level
Review: Arleta Pech's book is one of the best books on painting lush florals I have ever seen. This book is so good I later bought one of her video tapes to actually watch her creating a floral in her beautiful style. However, as long as you have this book you don't need a video. The book has everything you need to start painting in this beautiful style.

The first chapter gives information on materials, paints and surfaces. It also discusses looking for inspiration, developing the composition, creating paintings with a theme, creating a center of interest, detail drawing & use of a projector along with correcting the distortions that projection methods introduce.

The next chapter gets to the nuts and bolts of how she achieves her unique look. She discusses color theory particularly as it relates to glazing with watercolor. There are step-by-step photos showing her graded glaze technique and building form with it as well as her paint and pull technique. She shows the difference these techniques produce compared to wet-in-wet and provides some practice exercises with petals an iris and a bow. She also shows use of an airbrush which she uses mainly just to touch up & soften the center of a flower and occasionally to soften a background further.

The book has many step-by-step demonstrations of full paintings using her 2 favorite techniques as well as demonstrations of painting interesting backgrounds. There are many smaller demonstrations of just an individual flower. Interestingly, outline drawings are provided so you can trace the flower and practice painting it. She also uses lines pointing to particular areas of the outline drawing to remind you of certain areas to pay attention to.

Even though this is mainly a book about floral painting she provides demonstrations of painting china and lace since these items are often also featured in her floral still-lifes. One of the chapters shows step-by-step demonstrations of full scale paintings and a list beside each finished painting of problems that can crop up and their solutions. The final chapter is a gallery.

I have practiced painting some of the mini-demonstrations provided in the book and have been delighted with the results. Anyone wanting to paint better florals will benefit from this book.

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Summary: Arleta Pech: A Gifted Teacher
Review: I admired Arleta's book for 18 months before buying it. The beautiful, top-quality illustrations in this book underline Arleta's inate sense of articulation, composition, depth of field and rich, pure colour. Using pure colour washes to build up rich colour that "glows", Arleta is known for her attention to detail.

The book is surpassed only in Arleta's ability to teach in person. Having recently attended a 5-day workshop under this extraordinarily-gifted teacher, I feel that I have grown greatly in my own artistic scope and, following her advice to limit my palette, she has provided me with a greater understanding of the "science" of colour.

A beautiful book and a wonderful value...you will treasure it!

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Summary: DreamN60s
Review: I have had this book for over a year now. I am constantly going back to it for insperation. The book is a how to do book.. Arleta takes you through each step to creat many paintings with excelent results... her book is written in a style that is easy to read and follow. There are lots of photographs to help you understand what to do..I think that a beginner that has never painted a thing. could pick up this book and be painting beautifull paintings right away.. I recomend this book to anyone loving lace, flowers...and watercolour. Arleta shows you how to paint and have fun all at the same time..I loved her book so much, that I signed up for one of her 4 day classes in October 2000/ I am very excited about meeting this lady in person and being able to study under her... have fun painting... you can do it,with this book.....Jane

Rating:
Summary: DreamN60s
Review: I have had this book for over a year now. I am constantly going back to it for insperation. The book is a how to do book.. Arleta takes you through each step to creat many paintings with excelent results... her book is written in a style that is easy to read and follow. There are lots of photographs to help you understand what to do..I think that a beginner that has never painted a thing. could pick up this book and be painting beautifull paintings right away.. I recomend this book to anyone loving lace, flowers...and watercolour. Arleta shows you how to paint and have fun all at the same time..I loved her book so much, that I signed up for one of her 4 day classes in October 2000/ I am very excited about meeting this lady in person and being able to study under her... have fun painting... you can do it,with this book.....Jane

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Summary: Love Control? Learn to glaze in watercolor on dry paper.
Review: Learn to control watercolor, and achieve realistic images with three dimensional form by gazing. Also for a list of my watercolor workshops across the country go to www.arletapech.com

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Summary: A great how-to for flower painters!
Review: This book is filled with Arleta Pech's gorgeous paintings! She gives valuable demonstrations and tips on all aspects of painting flowers. You'll want to grab your brushes and begin!