This popular book provides all the information you need to get started in watercolour painting. Full of clear, simple advice and more than 70 step-by-step demonstrations, Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner will teach even the least confident of beginners the skills and techniques needed to start painting.

In this easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide, three professional artists explain all the basic watercolour techniques.

Top TV artist Alwyn Crawshaw demonstrates the basic techniques including brushstrokes, colour mixing and depicting distance and foreground to get you started in watercolour.

Lecturer and Artist Sharon Finmark explains how you can paint realistic figures, covering scale and proportion, mixing convincing skin colours and portraying movement and light effectively.

Artist and teacher Trevor Waugh demonstrates techniques for painting animals - domestic, farmyard and wild. Starting with simple animal shapes, Trevor takes you through the rudiments of 3D shapes, tone and colour and the tricks of using foreshortening in your work.

Roses have a special place in both art and culture across the world. Published in Association with Kew Gardens, this stunning book teaches you how to capture their character, colour and form in watercolour, and showcases both historical images from the Kew archives and the author's own extensive collection of inspiring paintings. Guided by watercolour artist and rose enthusiast Trevor Waugh, this book begins with clear explanations of essential watercolour techniques followed by a short project that allows the reader to explore the nature of watercolour in a practical way. Particular emphasis is placed on mixing colours cleanly in order to reproduce the purity and variety of this much-loved family of flowers. This is followed by sections on how to gather reference material; how to compose your own paintings; and how to inject your paintings with colour and light. All are accompanied by three further step-by-step projects, each culminating in a stunning painting of your own.