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Rating: 
Summary: Overcoming the fear of the "blank canvas"
Review: This book is a brilliant instruction book for both beginners and more experienced watercolourists. Highly recommended for beginners to watercolour who don't know where or how to start. Tony Smibert takes you step-by-step through a series of painting exercises designed to free your creative juices while teaching the art of watercolour from basic washes through to more advanced techniques. He begins with simple wash and brushstoke instruction and takes the artist through to completed landscapes. I particularly liked his ideas on framing the earlier exercises as complete works of art in their own right. He has apparently spent a great deal of time in Japan, and it shows in the powerful, yet simple techniques he employs and paintings he produces. His landscapes have a wonderfully atmospheric quality that he manages to teach to the reader. His instruction is detailed in a clear and easy to follow manner while leaving ample scope for the more adventurous students to apply their own interpretations to the paintings. This book has given me the confidence to try anything - no longer do I stare at a blank sheet of paper fearful of the first stroke, or wondering where to begin. I find myself going back to his basic exercises to "limber-up" before starting on a larger project, or simply to have a bit of fun when I'm too busy to complete a "proper" work. He also has two videos available to accompiany the book which I have found invaluable, but not essential.
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