How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself: Experimental Techniques for Achieving Realistic Effects

Award-winning artist Nita Engle’s breakthrough approach to watercolor shows readers how to combine spontaneity and control to produce glowing, realistic paintings. Her method begins with action-filled exercises that demonstrate how to play with paint, following no rules. Subsequent step-by-step projects add planning to the mix, demonstrating how to turn loose washes into light-filled watercolors with textural effects achieved by spraying, sprinkling, pouring, squirting, or stamping paint. Engle’s approach, and her results, are dramatic and dynamic; now watercolor artists can create their own exciting paintings with help from How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself.

Nita Engle, whose work appears in national magazines, is the subject of a PBS documentary, Wilderness Palette: Nita Engle in Michigan. She lives in Marquette, Michigan.