Expressive Painting: Tips and Techniques for Practical Applications in Watercolor, including Color Theory, Color Mixing, and Understanding Color Relationships (Portfolio)

I have a limited number of artbooks in my collection I feel are worth keeping. Others that arents don't make the cut and are returned or donated. This book has a place in my collection because it is big on foundational principles and rich in color. The artist dedicates half of the book on preparing for actual painting. There is content on brushes, paper, sketchbook, and palette, but a large portion of this section is for understanding color, color combinations and how to avoid ending up with mud. Key is revealing what mixes well, the difference in transparent pigments, opaque, and special color mixes, getting vibrancy and also neutral tines that are vibrant and not dead. He has a passion for vibrant colors and this is his strength in his teaching.The painting section comes about on page 67. In this section he has anywhere from 2 or 3 small images on each page depicting landmark areas in the southern California baseland as his subject matter and makes brief notations on lighting, shadows, people, night scenes, etc.,He doesn't get to actual step by step demonstrations until the end of the book starting on page 95. There about six works that have a progressive build of six to ten step progressions in each painting. If you are looking for a step by step book, this book isn't going to be the focal point at all.This book focuses on laying in color in color over over a rough but linear sketch. It has plenty of plein air on location type examples but real plein air and atmospheric perspective, depth of field established by fade out is missing. All the work appears somewhat flat by design. The strength is in the boldness of using complimentary colors, the use of white to allow the composition to breath and have light discourse some of the busyness of sketch lines and bright colors. There are lots of sketch pen/pencil details that make it to the surface of the work as part of the finished look whereas in most watercolor artist's work, the initial drawing lines disappear. The stylistic approach or appearance in this work is that the bright colors and pencil/own lines are part of the finished product. Brightly colored sketches, boldness and vibrant watercolor is what you get.A great deal of the book, as mentioned before, is dedicated to color. Six different color wheel gamuts are shown, palette layout, charging colors, allowing them to blend in the paper, knowing what colors mix well together, color values, and how to make correct value choices in your composition - all great for understanding how to combine those tubes of paint. His writing is straightforward and easy to follow without complex theories.If you are looking for a book in building confidence with emboldening your local color paintings to have more vibrancy and "expression" in color, this book may be helpful. If you are a beginner and you are still needing some help with understanding the process of building a watercolor painting, this book may not be for you. This book hits on the intermediate side of skill level.

This is an excellent book! I read it cover to cover (I own a lot of books on watercolor and this is rare!) Not only is Joseph Stoddard a very talented watercolorist, his book is a very comprehensive collection of good information on all aspects of watercolor painting. The book is well-organized and every topic is covered in a thorough but very straight forward and clear manner. It is easy to cross reference. Perhaps the best aspect of the book is that Stoddard, through his work and text, inspires the reader to run out immediately and begin painting.

I love this book. 5This is how I want to paint and I am learming a lot. I have been doing watercolor paintings off and on for several years and wanted a new perspective. I also got Sketching People by Lynne Chapman which is really where my focus is. Expressive Painting has so much information on mixing colors perspective, etc. which is always good.

Goodntips

I painted several pictures in his "loose" sketchy style.

I simply loved this book. It has so much information on watercolor painting. I saw his demo recently. He is a fine artist.

Es un libro centrado en el uso colorista de la acuarela. No es un enfoque serio, sino más bien una visiòn personal de su autor. Es muy útil en cuanto a que transmite su modo de combinar su propia paleta de colores de una manera original, atractiva a la vista y muy comercial con dibujos muy simples, al estilo de boceto.

My wife loves her new book.