Developing Style in Watercolour

by Ray Campbell Smith

Style is the quality that distinguishes one painter's work from another's. Just as people evolve their own distinctive handwriting, so in time painters develop an individual style. Aspiring watercolourists seeking an effective style often go about it the wrong way - commonly by trying to copy artists they admire - and this book offers them advice. The author explains how the correct choice of materials - paper, paints and brushes - will help in the quest for genuine style. He lays particular stress on the development of fluent brushwork, on the choice of an effective but limited colour palette, and on the search for sound but original composition. Contending that timidity, tightness and the need to paint exactly "what is there", are the main obstacles to the development of fluent style, the author suggests techniques and brushwork for avoiding them. The final chapter includes the work of leading contemporary artists, and discusses their development and work in detail. Ray Campbell Smith also wrote "Fresh Watercolour".

128 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1994

About the author

Internationally noted artist Ray Smith has exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. A lecturer at the Chelsea School of Art and at Exeter Art College, he was recently Artist-in-Residence at the University of Southampton in the UK. Smith has received many distinguished awards for his work, including an Arts Council Award, a Lindbury Trust artist's award, and the Deutscher Jugendbuch Preis. He has written several titles in The DK Art School series, and is the author of The Artist's Handbook and How to Draw and Paint What You See.