The watercolourist's nature journal - Jill Bays

Keeping a watercolour journal of the natural world is an excellent way to build up your confidence as a watercolourist, to start a collection of images as reference for future paintings, and to celebrate the natural world. This book gives season-by-season guidance on how to portary and record plants, flowers, animals, birds and landscapes, and shows how to use a sketchbook to collect material as a resource for creating complete watercolours. The first section of the book introduces readers to the essential watercolour techniques for journaling. The main section of the book takes a season-by-season look at the typical scenes you will find. Each season starts with a general overview of the main colour palette of the season and shows examples of typical weather, skies and clouds, tree shapes and other principal seasonal characteristics. The author then looks at the natural sights you might see in the early, mid and late periods of the season, offering technical tips, practical advice and her own inspiring examples. Within each season a topical landscape is also shown and extra feature spreads explore subjects such as hothouse flowers or harvest fruits.