Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor Paperback – Illustrated, January 29, 2005

Lots of excellent instruction next to the pictures, and therefore, lots of pictures. This is an excellent book to learn strokes and blending and etc. Great for Water Colors and Oils as well. The only "negative" for me is that the writing is in a funny script form which is sometimes hard to read. But if I read for context I can figure it out. Still, this is a very helpful tool for art painting.

I was perplexed by cross hatching and haven't seen good instruction on it beyond "just, you know, hatch more where there is more shading needed." So I purchased this book, which is one of the very few books I could even find on amazon. Wow. Not ONLY did this ABSOLUTELY give crosshatching info THROUGHOUT the book (not just a small excerpt!), but it was done in conjunction with OTHER pen shading (contour lines, stippling ((dots)), scribble, wavy lines, parallel lines, criss cross lines)ANDPAIRED with (not separate from) using OTHER media of tools (saran wrap, toothbrushes, string) and medium (alcohol, watercolor, SALT!!!, etc). So you don't give up on one lesson in favor of a new idea. The salt is PAIRED with the ink technique.Overall, I'm so incredibly impressed with this book. Not only for delivering the pen shading lessons I hoped for, but for doing it throughout the book in entirety!. This is done in a manner that Atypically extends beyond traditional art books set-ups, which is the modest inclusion of chapters relevant to the book's title, with THAT purchase promise then traditionally sandwiched by fluff chapters of unrequested randomness. You know, as most art books, and general non-fiction books, typically do.A+, highly recommend.

Claudia has a teaching technique that is informative, encouraging and a light style that does not leave me with a headache.I'm a hands-on learner. I don't learn well when a teacher gives too much information all at once. (It's like drudgery with a headache.)I learned a lot with a quick read through and I'm ready to begin watercolor painting. I use oil and acrylic paints. I always shunned watercolor because of the masking and layers of paint. Claudia made it clear why we would need the layers, and the application excites me. Add in the ink techniques and I'm hooked. This book is a great resource book and will be kept close at hand. I'm thankful I found this great teacher. I have bought another of her books. I'll read that one tonight. Thank you Claudia!

I wish Amazon would do a better job of packaging for shipping - it was jammed down in the envelope causing the a big section of the front cover corner to be bent completely back in a hard crease that will remain permanent now - on a brand new book.

To be clear, it isn't an instruction manual on how to draw or use watercolor -- those basics are assumed. Instead it serves as a reference manual for textures, techniques, and approaches. The illustrations inside are lovely, very classic look (but of course you can adapt them for more modern styles, your imagination is the limit). Essential? Maybe not, but it's a very nice reference and source of inspiration.

I’m sure plenty of experts already know the techniques described in this book, but if you’ve never thought about how pen & ink could enhance your watercolor pieces then I highly suggest this book. The only technique I was familiar with was more abstract - using a black fineliner to define boundaries & then ignoring those boundaries with watercolor. Im not a huge fan of this technique, it’s just not my thing, so I didn’t even consider buying this book for a while. But it kept being suggested to me, and after looking at the reviews I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I was very impressed with the various methods presented by the author. There’s no abstract here - the author uses various techniques to enhance realistic watercolor pieces with the subtle use of ink. Watercolor is the focus of this book…I have many watercolor books, all of them beautiful, but this book is one of a kind.

Sometimes a great reference image with a short description is much more useful than long explanations.With its detailed introductory chapters explaining materials that may be needed, followed by pages and pages of drawings and paintings with short descriptions of pen techniques, color palettes, and watercolor techniques, I found this book to be extremely useful.I wouldn’t recommend it for a beginner but once one has the basics down this book will show numerous methods of achieving certain looks as well as many new techniques.A very nice painting of an old barn may only go into detail about the colors and techniques used on the roof yet at the same time it makes it much easier to understand how other parts of the painting or drawing were done even though they weren’t explained.I often find myself flipping through the book looking at drawings and paintings just to come up with new ideas.And as a big fan of pen & ink I enjoy the detailed drawings as much if not more than the finished watercolors. I have a few other books from this artist/author and have enjoyed them all.

In love with this book! I bought it on a bit of a whim. Have been working in watercolor for a while but thought I would take a look at how mixing ink and watercolor could be used.Wow! This book really opened my eyes to how much can be done with this mix. Seems like much of what I see is an ink drawing with some washes of watercolor, but this artist/author does such a great job of showing how the two media can be employed as a unified approach to projects. Really well organized with clear explanation of different techniques!