RUBooks Blog

In this review we look at Charlie’s Top Tips for Watercolour Artists, a compact handbook from Charles Evans detailing over 100 tips to improve your watercolour painting.

Lets start by looking at the author himself, Charles Evans

Charles Evans is one of the UKs leading Painters. His likeable personality is reflected in his watercolour paintings, and have a lightness that many artists aspire to. Charles lives and works in Morepeth, Northumberland, in the North East of England, and gains inspiration from the natural scenery surrounding him. As well as painting in various mediums, Charles runs his own art classes from his studio, but also travels extensively, holding various painting holidays, visiting art societies and filming for his popular television series.

Charlie’s Top Tips for Watercolour Artists has a hard cover with 96 pages of tips from Charles, built up over years of watercolour painting. At about 160mm x 210mm x 15mm it can be taken anywhere, out and about when painting outside or in your studio.

Charles Evans is a well-known, popular author, and in his watercolour techniques book he shares many of his experience as a professional artist in over 100 great tips. Watercolour artists of various abilities will find this book interesting with superbly illustrated tips, step-by-step demonstrations and glimpses of various finished paintings.

The first thing you notice about Charlie’s Top Tips for Watercolour Artists is that it’s spiral bound. For art reference books, all should be like this as it allows you to lay your book flat without the pages wanting to turn back over and allows you to have your hands free for painting.

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Joe Francis Dowden free tips - read the full post to view the free tips.

As the days grow longer and spring starts to warm up the days it’s time to think about getting out and about, drawing and painting. Joe Francis Dowden’s book, The Landscape Painter’s Essential Handbook, is packed with 50 projects on how to paint beautiful landscapes in watercolour.

To celebrate spring being just around the corner and giving us more chance to get out and paint, below is the first of a few new free projects.

Joe Francis Dowden shows us some great tips on how to paint a shingle beach. As Joe mentions in his opening line for these tips, “A million pebbles on a beach, jumbled one on top of the other, all different colours, all in perspective”, if you are like me you will be thinking where do I start, but these great tips will guide you in the right direction.

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Watch this space for a review on Angelic Visions, a new instructional art book coming to RUBooks soon but in the mean time, take a look at this great video clip of the artist, Angela Sasser, in action.

Learn step-by-step how to create bodies, heads, limbs, wings and details, including flowing clothing and background elements and a whole lot more in Watercolour, ink and pencil. Beautiful final projects will inspire you to push the limits of your imaginations. Step-by-step processes are the focus of this book from simple poses and views to more complex scenes. You will find sidebar feature tips, frequently asked questions, solutions to common mistakes, information about angels and more.

A quick post to let you know about the latest competition to win a Derwent Watercolour Collection Wooden Box Set. A superb collection of Derwent Watersoluble pencils and accessories presented in a beautiful wooden gift box. All the pencils and accessories have been carefully chosen to help you make the most of this versatile medium.

Just follow this link to the competitions page, type in your details and cross your fingers, it’s that simple!

A quick post today as I could not help but highlight this video clip I came across on the net. The clip shows John Baxter painting a great watercolour landscape scene. If you want to learn a technique or wonder how an artist creates their paintings, then there is nothing better than watching them in action.

This clip is like standing over the shoulder of watercolour artist John Baxter, as he creates this wonderful painting. Watch the painting unfold and enjoy!

Coming soon to RUBooks - Click to enlarge

Coming soon to the RUBooks shop is the book ‘Fantasy Art in Watercolour-Painting Fairies, Dragons, Unicorns & Angels’, a book by three top watercolour artists who are expert at painting fantasy art.

This book is a compilation of four earlier fantasy art books, brought together in one great volume. There is advice on each individual area including subjects and backgrounds with ideas for producing artworks that vary from the traditional fantasy images to work with more depth and excitement. Each section covers the subject in very good detail showing you not only individual sections such as fairy limbs, unicorn hooves and horns or dragon scales, but how to use different watercolour painting techniques to create unusual effects. Each section also ends in two step-by-step demonstrations for the reader to follow which are easy to follow and utilise techniques covered in the book

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As we celebrate the launch of the new look RUBooks web site we have some free projects for our artists and photographers. The second FREE art project, which you can view or download and take away with you by opening and reading the full post. We hope you enjoy it but let us know what you think, plus, if you have any ideas on the projects you would like to see, just leave us a comment and let us know.

In this great little project, artist Joe Francis Dowden shows us tips for painting surf breaking over rocks, the colour palette used and some steps to help create a wonderful watercolour image. The project itself is taken from the book, The Landscape Painter’s Essential Handbook, which shows you how to paint 50 beautiful landscapes in watercolour.

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To celebrate the launch of the new look RUBooks web site we have some free projects for our artists and photographers. Here’s the art project, which you can view or download and take away with you, but keep checking back for more to follow. We hope you enjoy them and let us know what you think, plus, if you have any ideas on the projects you would like to see, just leave us a comment and let us know.

Joe Francis Dowden, watercolour artist, reveals some of his painting techniques in this project, where he shows us tips on painting the water in a stream in full flow. I find watercolours like this really hard to master especially when trying to paint water itself, as the thicker acrylic style of painting is more my style.

In this project Joe Francis Dowden highlights the palette he uses and 6 steps to help paint a stream in full flow. This FREE project is one of many tips and projects from his book, The Landscape Painter’s Essential Handbook from David & Charles. The book itself covers projects from snow-covered mountains to tranquil meadows, a unique artist’s reference that will show you how to paint 50 glorious landscapes in watercolour.

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With summer on us, it’s a fantastic time to leave the studio and enjoy the summer air. Many look to the landscape and the inspiration it gives to help produce some stunning paintings. The RUBooks blog team trawl of the net this week has highlighted this video clip which shows a quick insight into Joe Francis Dowden’s approach to painting water. The medium is watercolour and I still take my hat off to anyone who can master this great medium.

Take a look at the clip below but at the RUBooks store we have a great range of watercolour books to help you get started.

This weekends trawl of the net by the rubooks blog team highlighted this interesting video clip featuring Charles Reid, watercolour expert and inspiration to many. Following on from a previous post where I mentioned that ‘I take my hat off to those who use watercolour’, this additional clip just highlights that fact. Every time I see a real watercolour expert in action, like Charles Reid, who makes it seem all so easy, I am determined to better my skills.

The clip is not long but the work from this watercolour master is second to none. If like me you want to master the use of watercolour painting, the first step might be some of the great books we within RUBooks – Practical Art. Simple, easy to follow instruction that will help you increase your knowledge and skills with watercolour.

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