Chinese Landscape Painting Techniques for Watercolor Kindle Edition

The media could not be loaded.  This book from artist and teacher Lian Quan Zhen is a guide on combining traditional Chinese painting and modern watercolour techniques. An interesting premise.The book includes 12 demonstrations and 17 step-by-step tutorials. Those examples are quite detailed and you can clearly see what's going on. Quite amazing to see how he turns mundane looking reference photos into beautiful works.With Chinese painting, rules are more relaxed. For instance, there's no so called perspective points, or even vanishing lines. Modern watercolour techniques are more of representational drawings, and focus on getting the proportions right. Of course, within each style, there are many other details like the tools you use, how to handle brushes. All those are mentioned in the book.It's refreshing to see how a scene is interpreted with Chinese painting methodology, and using that mindset to draw from observation. For example while Chinese painters would pour black into to make masses, watercolours can also be mixed and poured. What the author says about spontaneous style is true. It's important to break out of the comfort zone and try new methods. With representational drawing, it can be sometimes difficult because you want to capture what you see, at least with the right proportion.The downside of the book is sometimes the examples are not so clear cut as to the combination of techniques. Well, the Chinese paintings fused with watercolours are alright. As for the some of the modern watercolour paintings examples, it's difficult to see that they are Chinese influenced or made with Chinese painting techniques. At times, it's hard to feel the spontaneity of the Chinese style. I'm saying this because I've seen that kind of spontaneity in an artist friend who mixes the East and West style brilliantly, combining colours with bold blacks (watercolour artist seldom use black), using flat washes or dry brush effortlessly in the same painting. You actually have to see it to realise that this kind of combination techniques are actually possible.Also, Chinese paintings are sometimes quite minimalistic, but most of the examples are the fill-the-page type. I wish there were more coverage on using white space.Overall, it's still an interesting book to get if you want to learn and practice some Chinese paintings techniques for your watercolours. I recommended it to artists who are more adventurous and don't mind some experimental fun.(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I was so anxious to see this book that I pre-ordered it months before it was released. There are many interesting facts in the book, particularly the descriptions of the different styles of Chinese history and their origins ... but the instructive portions of the book were not as helpful as I had hoped. It is still worth reading and Zhen is a truly gifted artist but it is not as instructive for artists as I expected.

I've been checking out his other books from the library. The libraries near me, in Los Angeles, only have only the digital version for this edition. I like looking at the actual book, so I have decided to order it.

I purchase one other book from this artist and liked his painting technique.Great book for learning landscape painting.

Good for landscaping painting

Having been a student of Zhen's at a workshop, reading this book is a visual reminder of the techniques that I learned. Zhen is gifted and provides good instruction and techniques.

The artist is wonderful. I have a number of his books and his paintings are great.TWCL

Liam never disappoints. He does everything with flair and beauty. The combination of watercolor and Chinese brush painting is fabulous and the readers is left wanting to try duplicate each and every page. He gives detailed instruction and makes the reader feel they too can do this. Love his work and thankful for yet another beautiful book.

Not quite as luscious as I expected, a little light on instructions and techniques, though high on ideas.

Great images combined with clear and concise instructions ... I would recommend this book

Yes lovely book

A lovely book but a bit too advanced for my skills at the moment. - a book for the future, perhaps!

Very pleased with this book as it was well described just what i needed to help me with my hobby thank you