Ready to Paint in 30 Minutes: Street Scenes in Watercolour

This is the common style of urban landscape. I've never like those paintings as they seem too busy and kind of prickly. (I'd much, much rather camp than vacation in the city too). I prefer painters like Andrew Wyeth. But I'm still giving it five stars because I've been working through it successfully. I'm not new to painting but am new to watercolor and I wanted something easy since I'm in a class that assigned an urban landscape.Grahame Booth has put together lessons designed to teach you 30 plus elements of cityscapes. Each one is quickly achieveable. It will help you with watercolor technique as well. The tracings are a brilliant idea, since many people can't draw yet or don't want to spend time drawing if they already know how, but just want the watercolor technique. In my case, I just wanted to know how to paint doors, windows, buildings, etc with watercolor. He uses a palette that includes colors most people would have and that will yield a harmonious result. I'm partway through the book and have learned a lot.I hope to find ways to apply these skills to something more my style once I understand the basics presented here. I usually buy watercolor books based on liking the person's style. In this case, that would have been a mistake. I'm going through the book quickly and learning what I need to know for my assignment and beyond. Recommended. Good job and appreciate the tracings, too.

I meant to write a review for this wonderful book awhile ago and finally... This book is not for the fainthearted:) but it’s the BEST Watercolor instruction and practise book on Street Scenes and more! Despite some distractions and life events, I’ve been painting along with Grahame through this book and finally I finished it!! ;) The last three projects are not easy for me, but are doable as it’s all based on the previous exercises. So I took my time and tried to do all the projects, from simple to relatively complex, and I’m very pleased! I’ve learned quite a bit and I appreciate how generous and excellent Grahame is! To me, he is one of the living masters, and I’m grateful to be able to learn from his book. Now onto his other book painting WC Landscapes... and I’m enjoying it a lot!Oh, I also bought these two books by Grahame as gifts for my three painting pals and they are delighted as well. Thanks!

Tracings included if speed is of the essence and you don’t want to or cannot draw. As an experienced watercolorist I needed help with street scenes do this book was perfect!

Want to develop your urban sketching skills, learn to paint street scenes with a limited palette, or just practice painting for 30 minutes a day? Then this is the book for you.The author is a great artist and a really good teacher, the projects in this book are fun to work on.The author covers all kinds of topics including perspective, mixing colors, simplification of scenes for painting and much more. I set my self a time limit of 30 minutes when I was working on these paintings to develop the discipline of quickly finishing work, and also not overworking the piece. Allow about 20 minutes to transfer the sketch to your sketchbook on top of 30 mins or so to work on each painting. I really enjoyed working through this book, and I really recommend it.

Quite possibly the best book on watercolor I’ve read. I’ve only been painting a year and this book taught me so many elements—how to do a proper wash, paint a sky, trees, people, it covers color and perspective, all in easy two-page lessons. Best of all, tracings are included. As I finished each lesson I was amazed at what I learned. The lessons carry over into all kinds of watercolor like landscapes, etc. Just a great book.

I have several in the Ready to Paint Watercolour series, but right now the Street Scenes is my favorite! The author explains the techniques clearly and provides pictures of each step. **One exception: when doing each of the projects be sure to note where the white space is reserved by looking at the photos carefully - once you apply paint it is too late!

I am a painter and I was hoping to get A more advanced book on the topic. I did not need the tracing or anything like that and it wasn’t explained in the Online description that this really was much more elementary book for a beginner.

This is a great book.

At present I am about halfway through this book. I have several art "how to" books in my collection. I tend to read the instructions and information without following through on all the exercises. Not so with this book. Grahame Booth understands how artists often freeze up when facing a blank sheet of beautiful watercolor paper, so he instructs us to use small (15 by 10 cm) to do the exercises in the book. This helps to simplify as well as loosen up, which is one of the main purposes of this book. He also covers the important aspects of perspective, tonal variation, seamless washes and edge control. I am thoroughly enjoying this book. I have taken several expensive workshops with world-class painters, and I find that much of the same material and good advice is contained right in this book. The exercises, whether you use the helpful tracings or not, will help you learn how to get from merely okay paintings to the sort for which we admire Grahame.

I am very impressed with this book, the drawings are excellent and the instructions easy to follow. You can make some good pictures here, especially if you can paint but are not that good at drawing. I'm glad I bought it and I can recommend it if you want to produce some interesting and inspirational pictures. I particularly like the rainy scene as I haven't painted rain before.

It's difficult to write an objective review on a book as what suits one won't necessarily suit someone else. This suited my purposes well. I can't draw a straight line (not that there are many in this book LOL) so the tracings are invaluable to me. The style and content was really good and I felt my painting did improve by the time I'd finished the book.

I love that the sketching process is done for you, all sketches are easy to trace and the process of adding watercolour is easily explained.. i did do multiple versions of a few with different medias (watercolour pencils, inktense ect) Great book!

Good value for moneyInstructions written very clear and conciseCan’t wait to try out the outlined watercolour projects with the enclosed tracing sections.