Book Review: Watercolor: Paintings of Contemporary Artists

This book is a mixed bag. Looking at the preview pages that Amazon has provided, I would not have bought the book. But I managed to browse through the whole book at a bookstore and like it enough to buy it.

The book features the artworks of several contemporary artists. I only know two out of the 21 artists featured so it's great to check out other new artists.

What you won't see are the typical traditional watercolour painting style. Instead, we have a nice variety of artworks and subjects being tackled by the watercolour medium. There are artworks of desks, childlike drawings of vegetables, ink and watercolour sketches, fashion illustration, abstract, Ultramarine blue portraits, book spines, fantasy illustrations and other stuff.

It's quite cool to see how the artists use watercolour for the different subjects in their own styles. This is the main reason why I bought the book. It's delightful to look at all the examples and to get a bit of inspiration for experiments that I might personally try.

By the way, I won't describe more than half of the artworks featured as paintings. Paintings implied a finished piece of work. There are some finished pieces, and there are those that feel unfinished, there are the illustrations, and then there are some paintings.

The only text are the artist profiles. There's no mention of the techniques which would have made the book even better.

Who this book will appeal to, I feel, is quite subjective, so I recommend browsing before buying if possible.

The artists included are

• Dear Hancock
• Julia Denos
• Danny Gregory
• Samantha Hahn
• Virginia Johnson
• Anna Emilia Laitinen
• Daire Lynch
• Fabrice Moireau
• Jane Mount
• Amy Park
• Cate Parr
• Isadora Reimao
• Sujean Rim
• Amy Ross
• Jose Seligson
• Becca Stadtlander
• John Norman Stewart
• Paolo Terdich
• Tamara Thomsen
• Jenny Vorwaller
• Hannah Ward

Watercolor: Paintings of Contemporary Artists is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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