The concept for this book is how to replicate paintings where watercolors color — and fill in — ink pen outlines. I’d seen these sorts of beautiful artworks and wondered how I might create my own outlined watercolor paintings? Here is my answer! These sorts of florals seem to be *the* contemporary artwork style right now. Yet I was surprised to find how easy it is to create my own with the help of this insightful guide. There are lots of helps to get started — mixing watercolors, how to do shading, etc. The book acknowledges this can be done in different ways, but the main approach seems to be breaking down the drawings into separate components — simple drawings of only parts of the flowers, that I can repeat over and over (on scratch paper) until I get it right. For example, the red poppy painting started with a photo in their garden.

Then, the different components are rendered in these practice drawings — petals, stem, stamens, leaves, and so forth. So I practiced those six elements on paper until they seemed to be right, then drew them all together a few times as a single flower. The whole process only took a few minutes (and is fun to do!). Then, I did a real drawing on watercolor paper and painted it in. My first attempt was suitable for framing, thanks to this simple system. It’s a beautiful, full-color book, with helpful tips, great layout, and top-notch printing quality. It helps make this on-trend painting style quite simple, even for non-artists (like me) to practice, learn, and create beautiful works of art!