5-Minute Watercolor Review

5-Minute Watercolor 

by Samantha Nielsen

2018, Quarto Publishing

A 128 page book packed full with ideas makes a good introduction to this wonderful medium. I've been looking at lots of watercolor books recently because I want to teach my grandchildren how to use watercolors. People say it's a difficult medium, and, it is, if you unreasonably expect to master it all at once. Samantha does a masterful job of serving her watercolor wisdom in 4 main meals (Chapters: Tools, Easy Techniques, Applying Your Techniques, and Take It Further), and bite size pieces within each meal.

Since I'm focused on doing individual lessons, her bite size pieces under Easy Techniques provides me with an outline for lesson plans with my granddaughters:

• Washes
• Wet-in-wet
• Blending
• Basic bloom
• Pulling from color
• Dry-brush
• Simple splatter
• Tape
• Masking fluid
• Fast ways to lift paint
• Layering and glazing
• Basic scumbling
• Paper and gravity
• Warm and cool colors
• Easy ways to gain brush control
• Ink line and watercolor wash
• Light to dark

That's 17 topics, each of which Samantha covers in a 2-page spread providing enough directions to get you started. 

Unfortunately, if you're new to watercolor you'll need a guide to get the most nutrition from Samantha's next two meals. 

Her Chapter 3, Applying Your Techniques, is packed full of good advice and pointers, but if you're looking for 'how to' instructions you'll need to go elsewhere. The internet, especially YouTube, has many show-n-tells that can provide you with needed instructions.

Her Chapter 4, Take It Further, gives you ideas for doing just that. I appreciate Samantha's closing her book with a summary of Key Elements, but it brings up a minor 'niggling' I have about her sequencing. Six of these Key Elements (Simple Shapes, Sketch It, Value, Light to Dark, Layering, and Paint It!), because they are so important, would provide a good review at the beginning of the previous chapter, Applying Your Techniques. Conversely, the first topic she covers in chapter 3 is 'What is plein air?'. Plein Air is an advanced topic and would have better placed as a great lead into Chapter 4, Take it Further. 

So, if you're looking for a pointers on how to teach watercolor, Samantha Nielsen's 5-Minute Watercolor is a good bet. If you are looking to learn watercolor, the first two chapters of her book (TOOLS and EASY TECHNIQUES) can get you started, but you'll need guidance to digest her last two, valuable chapters.