Ray's Top Tips for Watercolour Artists: 85 Essential Tips to Improve Your Painting(Top Tips)

Ray Campbell Smith shares his years of experience in this book packed full of tips for watercolour painters. Learn all you need to know, from the the tools of the trade, choosing what to paint and avoiding and correcting mistakes, to how to paint skies, water, foliage and more. The tips are clearly presented and explained, and illustrated by many beautiful and accomplished paintings. They will help unravel the mysteries of the watercolour medium for those new to painting and also for more experienced watercolourists on the lookout for tips from a true master.

Table of Contents:
1) Years of experience shared in 85 easy to follow tips 2) Practical spiral-bound format allows you to access tips while painting 3) Beautiful paintings to inspire and instruct

About the Author :
Ray Campbell Smith is a prolific and versatile professional painter who specialises in the watercolour medium. More than forty one-man shows have been held, many in the wide-ranging list of galleries which regularly exhibit his work. His work is represented in many collections in the UK and abroad. As well as contributing regularly to leading art magazines, he gives lectures, demonstrations and criticisms to art groups. He has made many highly successful instructional videos and DVDs and has written numerous books on painting, including several major best-sellers. Ray is on the advisory panel of the Society of All Artists in the UK. He has appeared on TV on several occasions, once painting a landscape in the company of Mary Nightingale, and he was recently voted Artist of the Year by the Society of All Artists.

Review :
The main focus of Ray's Top Tips is to help painters improve their painting. The book is ideal for for beginners and will help to give someone new to watercolour painting an insight into pitfalls to avoid in their painting. More experienced watercolour artists will also find plenty of interesting information in the book, in particular the illustrations help to act as a reminder of some more basic techniques.-Suite101.com Benefit from Ray's experience and avoid the pitfalls for all aspects of watercolour painting, from choosing materials to simple tips and techniques for painting. This neat, compact book helps you to become a better artist. 85 essential tips are presented in a concise manner. Find out how to mix greys, how to avoid granulation and so much more.-KarenPlatt.co.uk As the title indicates, this is a book of tips on how to paint better watercolor pictures. There are 85 different tips in here and they range from choosing paints to laying down washes, working from photographs to getting to grips with perspective. This is the type of book that is suitable for both beginners and intermediate level painters, being a goldmine of information on not only what to do, but what not to do and why. I like the way this book stays flat when placed near where you are painting for easy reference - all practical books ought to have spiral spines! I also confess to being impressed with how few materials you actually really need to paint really good landscapes, especially the paints (only five!). This is very much a book for landscape watercolor artists, and as it is published in the UK anybody not wanting to paint pictures of that country will need a rather different palette although a Mediterranean one is also given. I particularly found helpful the parts where one painting is shown with the error and another shown correcting it - the early part of this book contains many such examples and they are more helpful than either just words, or just showing the ideal painting. Most of the pictures shown convey mood, atmosphere and a sense of place wonderfully and are quite small, so I would love to see a beginner's book of staged watercolor paintings as quick and simple. As it is they illustrate admirably the various tips given, and despite this being a quick read I found that it is the type of book that is handy to keep as a reference to dip into. The combination of simple pictures and the author's laconic but perfectly understandable style makes for a user friendly and successful format. Highly recommended for anybody who paints landscapes in watercolors - or wants to - and could use some tips.-Myshelf.com Ray Campbell Smith is an experienced and respected teacher as well as being one of the best watercolour technicians there is. This is a slowly-developing series from Search Press that they're so far resisting the temptation to stuff with every Tom, Dick and Harry who'll put brush and pen to paper. It's been a while since the first volume appeared and this second one is certainly worth the wait - when Ray offers you 85 pearls of wisdom, you'd certainly better sit up and take notice! And he doesn't disappoint. Reading the contents list, you could be forgiven for thinking that the usual suspects (composition, use of colour, perspective. skies, foregrounds, etc, etc) are all here, and so they are, but seen from the unique perspective of a man who paints the best water and the best skies in the business, bar none. Ray can do more in a simple sketch than many artists can in a multi-page demonstration and this pocket-size guide is far larger in scope than its format. Ray will show you how to use colour and shading to give objects shape and to suggest perspective as well as to balance composition. The truth is that there's a veritable masterclass in here positively elbowing its way out.-Artbookreview.net Ray is one of the best watercolour technicians about, as well as being an experienced and (deservedly) popular teacher. This collection of 85 nuggets of wisdom is therefore worth its weight in gold and covers tone, light and perspective as well as skies, landscapes and water. Even more experienced artists should find much that is of value.-The Artist