Direct Watercolor

This is an inspiring book. I work mostly in acrylics but decided to try watercolor because I. Was traveling and needed s ething compact. I chose this book by title ( "Direct" sounded good) ad put it on my Kindle. When I opened the book I was b!own away by Marc's work and wanted to rush right out to paint - at two a m ? The many demos are very helpful and the text shows how to think like a watercolorist, which is almost backwards from the way I approach acrylics. I think I shall buy the physical book. When I get home because the double spread format on Kindle is quite small: with my cataracts I have to read it with a magnifying glass in one hand whilst holding the Kindle close to my eyes with the other.The brief section on oil painting interested me in showing how an artist can approach the sam.e sort of subject in different media in fact. I think this book can help painters working in other media asWel! As watercolor . And it has inspired me to try watercolor, which I have found intimidating in the past.

★★★★★ from Ginger on May 22, 2018Capturing Shapes and Celebrating the Magic of Water and PigmentAs a new urban sketcher, but someone who has a past in painting, I found Marc’s book to be informative, beautiful, and is a book about technique and style. He does offer step by step demonstrations of how he thought about and developed his paintings in order for you, the painter or urban sketcher to address your own images and sompositions.If you are looking for a book that will tell you what colors to use and which brushes to use, this might not be a good fit for you. It is certainly a book for intermediate painters or adventurous beginners.If you want to step away from under-drawings or would like a change from the waterproof ink pen drawing with watercolor wash, this is another path to explore. (By the way, I still like to use waterproof ink and pencil drawings on site an watercolor wash later, but I am enjoying exploring direct watercolor, as well.) This book lays out his strategies for composing, leaving white space with negative shapes, and how he works in layers, maintaining a painterly, loose style.Marc’s website/blog (Citizen Sketcher) contains more info on his approaches, current and past palette colors, and lately with the 30x30direct watercolor challenge for June 2108, lots of additional information and lessons about direct watercolor.I’ve found this book to be valuable in improving my personal style.

I thoroughly enjoyed Marc's first book, The Urban Sketcher, so this was an insta-buy for me as soon as I found out about it.It didn't disappoint.The first part of the book goes over what direct watercolor is, the tools Marc uses, and includes a few tutorials on working with this technique. The rest features the various destinations Marc travelled to over the years, and of course the paintings that he made while there. So you'll have a few pages dedicated to Portugal, Tuscany, Key West, and so on. I found it a very nice way of organizing things, it's almost like reading a book version of his blog.Even though the more "technical" how to bits are mostly reserved to the first part of the book, you'll find the author's thoughts and more tips alongside the paintings in the rest of the book as well. There are also a few step by step spreads showing the process for entire paintings scattered throughout the book.Great book, and a great source of inspiration too.That said, I would recommend you pick up The Urban Sketcher as well; while it describes a slightly different process (i.e. creating a loose ink sketch that will then be colored with watercolor), it includes A TON of technical tips that aren't really covered in this book.

Marc Taro Holmes is a very accomplished watercolor artist and this book is full of his beautiful, loose plein-air watercolor sketches reproduced in high-quality color images. The book contains step-by-step demonstrations of a number of paintings along with the artist's comments about his fresh, spontaneous approach to capturing the essence of a scene. This book is not best suited as an instruction manual for beginners but is more appropriate for more experienced sketchers / watercolorists seeking inspiration and to improve their skills.

I really like this book, and I think others will too, just so they are very clear what they getting. This is a physically small paperback (98 pages) that mostly contains a chronology of Mr. Holmes' loose urban sketcher style landscape painting. There is one demonstration of shadows using a bronze head and one about brushwork but this is not a book about people or portraiture. There are some very good tips and a few demonstrations, but this is mostly a compilation of the artists work with some advice about how he did each picture and what he was thinking about to accomplish them. It is not a classic how-to-do-it watercolor book. So I would advise getting this book if you like the artists work and want to look at it, plus get some very good tips on how he works.

This book is full of gems: beautiful direct watercolor sketches and paintings plus many, many tidbits of good advice on process and approach. Both watercolor sketchers and studio painters who want to paint in a more direct style will find value here. It is a fun read too, to find the author's occasional humorous comments about the challenges of the painting process. The book interior is beautifully designed: lots of art to look at, just enough text to feel meaty, and layout is really nice and inviting read. (I feel that the font and size of the title on the cover is distracting/ineffective, but I realize that is down to personal design preference and irrelevant in a book review.)Kudos to the author on a helpful, lovely book. I will be adding it to the list of books I recommend to my watercolor sketching students.

I have followed various articles by the author and in fact purchased an earlier book. I was curious to see how his approach has evolved over time. I have done some small works and agree that the approach gives a more "painterly" approach. Many examples given and they are delightful to look at.

Its great to have a book with Marc's painting in it. All I would say is that on Amazon UK, this book is VERY expensive for what it is. It appears to be self-published and the production values are not that high - for example, the cover feels rather flimsy to me and is very amateurishly designed. The layout can at times look like the sort of thing I would do myself with a word processor - it doesn't give the appearance of being professionally edited for example. I would feel good about it if it was £5 or £6 less but as someone who buys a lot of art books, the quality and size of this book does not compare with professionally published books and at this price is poor value for money. I'm afraid I returned it for a refund. If it was £11.99 instead of £17.99 I would have accepted it.

I have two of Marc Holmes books and I have really enjoyed them both. His most recent; Direct Watercolor has been very helpful in improving my watercolor painting skills. The images are clear, large and the information/instruction is well thought out and applicable for a novice as well as an experienced artist. I only wish the format of the book itself was a little bigger. My aging eyes and bifocals would have appreciated that.

Great book, full of interesting sketches, paintings and ideas to inspire taking on more challenges with buildings and scenes. His paintings make me want to travel to the areas and see for myself what he observed. I also have The Urban Sketcher, and this is a nice follow up. This book is smaller in size than I expected, but that also makes it a nice size to carry with me on day trips to use for inspiration.

Marc's books always over-deliver and this one is no exception. A careful treatise on how Marc paints directly (no under drawing) it's augmented by a large array of Marc's art as examples of what can be done. This makes it not only a great learning tool, it's so full of eye-candy that you'll want it on your coffee table.