Watercolor With Me in the Forest

I originally bought this book as a surprise for my cousin who started to learn watercolor. After hearing how much she was enjoying it, I decided to let go of my intimidation of the medium, and try for myself as well. It was the best decision. The book is laid out with easy to follow, simple short instructions. The pages are good quality and the pre-sketches are incredibly helpful. I’d been interested in watercolor since my college days and I’m glad to say, those 20 years of intimidation have since turned into fascinated delight. I couldn’t love this book more, or be more grateful I took the risk to try a new thing. Furthermore, my delight inspired a long distance friend to try too! We are now doing book 2: Into the Ocean together over zoom/facetime. Dana.. make more books! I don’t know what I’ll do when we finish these. Sketching is our shared weakness.. make some pre-sketched workbooks for us! Or, more in the Into series! Into the holidays: with various fun year round scenes. Into the garden with plenty of flowers, critters, and mix garden plot scenes. Into the Skies with sunsets, sunrises, auroras, thunder clouds, rainbows. Into the Mountains: how to do snowy landscapes, glacier passes, sunrise reflections on snowy scenes, animal prints through snow mountain meadows. Into landscapes: how to do shading on hills or under trees, how to do ocean waves, or waterfalls, or quiet rivers with fish inside? Just some thoughts! We want more!

If it were possible to give this book more than five stars I absolutely would!! Painting is one of my favorite hobbies and finding actual coloring books for painting as a medium is difficult. When I saw this book and how the pictures were pre-sketched and that it gave step by step instructions I was sold. This is perfect for beginners and those that are well skilled. It teaches you different skills and techniques that really made me feel like an artist! I absolutely love forest animals and the book itself has such a plethora of animals and subjects. I'm only now beginning the wet-on-wet section of the book but I've already purchased the second book in this collection - "Watercolor With Me in the Ocean". I've flipped through its pages and the second book is even better than the first, I'm very much looking forward to beginning it! I can't say enough positives about this fabulous book, it's my favorite thing recently and it really makes painting with watercolors so much fun!! Great for kids, teenagers, and adults alike! I'll definitely be purchasing each and every new edition of this book that becomes available!! Looking forward to the third installment!!

I like this book. I wasn't familiar with the artist's youtube lessons when I got it and still haven't seen them, so can't speak to that. Also, I have not watercolored in the actual book, so I can't speak to what the paper is like. I have been copying the drawings freehand onto water color paper and then doing the tutorials and they have been helpful. They are well-organized, starting with lessons for wet on dry, then wet on wet, then fur, then ink and wash, which is more or less the order of difficulty of the techniques. Explanations are clear and the techniques do work--of course you get better as you practice them (which is why I don't want to paint in the book, there's not enough room to practice as much as I like to). The artist's style is not my favorite, I'm not a big fan of 'whimsical' but the techniques would work for any style. I did end up getting the Cotman paints that she uses, as there are always deals on Cotman in the craft stores around here, so you can often get a tube for as little as $1.60 with a coupon. And they are basically good paints (I like W & N artists quality a little better). However, I have to say that I really dislike the Indian Red paint which is heavy, very opaque and a kind of 'brick' color that doesn't blend well with the rest of her palette. And she uses it for many things. she uses it to paint in raspberries! Ugh! It doesn't even look good in the mushroom at the beginning of the book. I'd recommend switching that out for a true red, Cotman has several options.

Best paint along book. I have several of this type book and this one is my favorite. I’ll get the others in this series for sure.

I bought on this on a recommendation and am so glad that I did. Instructions are clear and there is a lot of variety for practice. She has the book split into sections in order to practice different techniques and there is a variety of images to use them on. It's not a high quality paper, but it's meant for practice and not a framed piece that doesn't bother me. The only thing I do NOT like is that the book does not lay flat when opened which makes it difficult to paint because you have to hold the book down with something. I'm planning to get it coil bound at a local office store to make it easier. Otherwise it's great and I would absolutely recommend it.

The most adorable water color book! Great quality

Just exactly what I needed to practice learning to watercolor. The book was used but in next to perfect condition. None of the pages were colored and it was packaged well to keep it clean and nice.

I have only skimmed through this book so far, but what I have read and viewed look to be very well thought out. I think it will be great fun to learn from this book. This is a wonderful beginner book with 119 pages of lovely watercolor illustrations and instruction on nice thick paper. Dana also has a Youtube channel with tutorials of some of the illustrations. This is actually how I discovered her book. The introduction is one page with a short list of supplies included. You then jump right into learning. I love that. I plan to start painting from it in the next few days. I will sketch the drawings on a separate watercolor sheet though. I don't really want to paint in the book so I won't be able to comment on the paper. I can say that the paper is more of a hot press surface but not a super smooth hot press. The weight of the paper feels to be about 110lb. Each section is designed to teach a certain technique. Wet on dry, wet into wet, how to paint fur and ink & wash. Each section starts simple and progresses with each study to the most difficult of the studies at the end. As you progress to the next section she has you use the techniques you learned previously along with the technique she is teaching in the new section.

Had In The Forest and In The Ocean for a Christmas gift yesterday and I completed my first project today! I absolutely love them. Laid out beautifully and such lovely watercolour projects especially for a beginner like me who is also learning drawing / sketching for the first time. This really allows you to focus on the watercolour painting skills. Super excited to work through both books. Paper is maybe student quality but I’m happy enough with it and I think it would be way too heavy with a thicker paper.

Ich folge Dana Fox schon einige Zeit auf YouTube und weil mir dort ihre Tutorials so gut gefallen, habe ich mir nun dieses Buch bestellt. Das Buch ist in verschiedene Techniken, z.B. Nass in Nass, Fellstrukturen usw. eingeteilt, wobei auf der linken Seite direkt im Buch auf Aquarellpapier geübt werden kann. Ich kann dieses Buch nur empfehlen und werde mir mit Sicherheit auch noch die beiden Anderen Bücher von Dana bestellen.

Love this book!!! I can’t remember the last time that I was so excited about a book. I have just done the first page and I can’t wait to master the entire book. I love that this book is made out of watercolour paper so that you can actually work on the opposite page with her instructions. I think the instructions could be a little bit more in detail for beginners, but I am already an artist so it was very easy for me to follow. I purchased this book as a daily journal to keep practising something. And it is also a great way to refresh some skills that you may not be using on a daily basis. Or maybe even learn a different technique to achieve a certain look. All in all, I love my new book! * I covered the instructions for copyright purposes.

While the book is gorgeous and full of exciting exercises, the paper is of poor quality and does not handle wet-on-wet washes at all. It pills and buckles badly on applying water. I'm really disappointed. I could try the exercises on my Watercolour paper but then what's the use of an expensive workbook? A wasted opportunity in a book of this kind.

El libro es por mucho mejor de lo que esperaba, diseños colores, el papel, muy recomendable para principiantes 🥰