Kew: The Watercolour Flower Painter's A to Z: An Illustrated Directory of Techniques for Painting 50 Popular Flowers

I love the layout in this book. She explains the steps to painting each flower without sounding patronizing and references techniques in the explanations that can be found in the beginning and end of the book. The step by step color pictures are very helpful so you can see how each step and technique should look. There is information on floral composition and basic color theory with photos in the back. There is a glossary and index as well. As always use the best supplies you can afford but don't stress over them. If you are just starting out use what you have! Get the best paper you can afford. Ideally 100% cotton paper. I still use cheap dollar store watercolor paper for warming up and just goofing around. Start with your paint primaries. Learn to mix your colors and most importantly have fun. You can paint these flowers with any supplies you have. Will they look the same? I hope not, it's art. For anyone getting started in Botanical art studies, I think this book is a great starting point. Im using it with "Botanical Art Techniques" (Woodin and Jess). Fletcher has done a wonderful job of breaking botanical watercolor down into easy to understand terms without overwhelming you. I highly recommend this book.

This is a lovely book for those who paint or want to paint watercolor florals. Each of the 50 flowers has it's own two-page spread that contains information about the flower, a suggested palette, a clearly written step by step "how-to" including clear photos and a beautiful photo of the finished watercolor flower. Even if you don't paint, the book, which is reminiscent of botanical print books, is beautiful! I highly recommend this as a addition to any library, painter or not.

I am very interested in doing botanical watercolor illustrations, and I needed a good instruction book not only to get me headed in the right direction as far as the basic images of several different flowers, but also how to approach painting them with watercolor. I don't consider myself particularly good at technical drawing, so I was also looking for something to show the basic structure of individual flowers and their stems, as well. This book is PERFECT- each two page spread showcases one flower (50 flowers in all)- on one page there is tips and information about the plant, a suggested color palette, and some detailed instruction, and on the facing page is a full-size, full-color watercolor image of the flower, so you can either use that as a starting point or just straight out copy it as a way to teach yourself the basics of botanical watercolor. Since there was no "look inside" feature for the content of the book (just the intro pages and covers) I thought I would upload a slideshow so you can see some of the flowers featured and how the book is structured. I love this book and I know it will prove invaluable as I learn about botanical watercolor.

So its a scanned version of the book, library sleeve included. Hard to read and follow, its a bit distracting

This is an excellent title!! From A-Z this reference book covers drawings, color swatches, and steps to create virtually every popular flower I've wanted to paint. There is even an Orchid. If you love to paint flowers, this is a great book to have. It's not just a picture book, each flower is shown across a 2 page color spread with steps to paint petals, leaves and stems. The second part covers beautiful compositions with the flowers you've learned in the first part. You won't be disappointed with this purchase. It's a keeper for me.

Not a how to book but I was hoping that it wouldn’t be. It’s exactly as I hoped for, a reference book that is full of flowers. The name of each flower and a beautiful watercolor illustration of said flower on every page. Great practice in terms of using references and just testing drawing florals

I have a Kew book on trees that I really enjoy so I thought this would be equally as exciting. I have lots of botanical art books so I appreciate different styles but this book just seemed rather bland. The same generic flowers, nothing exciting or different. Someone mentioned the sample being different than the book they received. I may see about that because I looked at the sample and really wanted the book based on that.

As of this writing there are separate listings (and separate customer reviews) for the paperback and hardback versions (978-1581802146). I wasn't sure which one I should buy. I checked the hardback out of the library and fell in love with the book. But I thought that since the paperback is more recent the pics might be even better. I just got the paperback today and did a quick page by page comparison. Many of the pics in the hardback are more saturated in color than they are in the paperback, especially in the beginning of the book. Side by side some of the paperback flowers look washed out in comparison. Initially I was very disappointed that I hadn't purchased the hardback. However, as I continued thru the book I realized that the paperback pics are probably more accurate and better. Many of the hardback's image colors are too cool, missing some of the wonderful warm colors. Also some of the hardback images are so saturated that you miss key detail (like on the pansy). The Peony text in the hardback I checked out is blurry, but it is OK in the paperback. Bottom-line, they both are great versions of an amazing book.

I really love this watercolor book. The examples are great and each teach some techniques along the way. This is not a step by step, as there are only one picture of the finished flower model on even pages and tips and how to hints on the odd pages. There are 50 different models. But the whole is inspiring and approachable even for beginners. Warmly recommended if you have any interest in flowers painting, and also good as a beginner book.

I love this artist and I looked up for this book as my first watercolor flower book! It's amazing and has so many examples, I'm looking forward to learn from it! But there was a huge problem, the printing was a complete mess. First the cover and the interior don't match the cover is "ok" but the interior is upside down. Second thing I noticed, with is what concerns me the most, is that the pages are out of center, this way titles are almost falling out of the pages and I can see the color guide that should have been removed when printing. I'm abroad, I live in Brazil, and I can't tell if it's a expensive book in the UK,Canada, USA, wich are the countries that the price is specified in the back cover, but here in Brazil it's an expensive book to buy, and I really thought and researched a lot to decide to buy that book. So even though happy to have a book from Adelene, and from Royal Kew Gardens, I feel a little upset that it has it's print messed up.

Excelente libro, aunque está en inglés (la versión en español está agotada). Es muy completo y está ampliamente respaldado por profesionales y aficionados como uno de los libros básicos para iniciarse en la acuarela.

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Loved it.