White! Light! Bright!: How to Make Your Backgrounds Support and Enhance Your Watercolor Paintings

This richly illustrated and comprehensive resource helps watercolourists plan and create exceptional paintings by focusing on colour, value, and other elements in both subjects and settings. Too often, melding the subject with the background is an afterthought for artists. White! Light! Bright! is the mantra for this book’s unique and effective method for planning your subject in concert with its background, and then creating a powerful piece in three major stages: from white, light, and bright colour to mid-values and finally to darks. Easy-to-follow text from a skilled teacher alongside visuals and demonstrations helps you catch the energising spark of light and contrast. Get comfortable with the how-to of building value, colour, shape, and background through various edges, textures, and other compositional elements. You’ll bolster the creative thinking and planning processes that are key to an artist’s ability to turn an abstract idea into a standout representational watercolour painting. AUTHOR: Bivenne Staiger is a watercolour instructor with a dual ability to paint with distinction and teach with clarity. Recipient of American Watercolor Society’s Silver Medal and many other distinguished awards, she has shared her knowledge through classes, workshops, and art demonstrations for almost 20 years. SELLING POINTS: . Provides an efficient and easy-to-follow three-stage process for painting subjects with backgrounds . For students of watercolour - melding backgrounds with subjects is a common challenge most artists face . Simplifies many motif possibilities into a planning section and painting component broken into three major stages 125 colour illustrations