Watercolor Textures for Artists by Ana Victoria Calderón

I got to know the art (and teaching style) of Ana Victoria Calderón when I took some of her classes online a few years back. In her classes she demonstrated the kind of easy to follow and fun watercolor exercises that is also in her newest book Watercolor Textures for Artists. I love how fun and colorful all her exercises are, so I jumped at the chance to check out her new book and paint along with some of her ideas on how to illustrate “textures” using my beloved set of watercolors.

Watercolor Textures for Artists: Explore Simple Techniques to Create Amazing Works of Art by Ana Victoria Calderón book review by iHanna

Of course this book, as most other tutorial books, starts with the basic basic; how white is not a color we use in watercolor (instead the paper is our white) and what tools you need to get started, going through brushes and such. But since Ana Victoria comes from a mixed media art background, she encourages us to also whip out our gel pens and pencils, which appreciate. In her texture swatching, which is the bulk tutorials of the book, she shows us how to combine all of these tools and ideas in fun ways to create patterns (textures) that mimic nature. Just the wording of “texture swatching” as she calls it, makes me eager to jump in. Before finishing the book I pulled out my own watercolors to start swatching. I think that is a high star rating for a book full of creative exercises.

Reading through this book, but especially painting along and actually doing the exercises, you will learn how to paint pebbles, strips and dots, create swooshes (hair structure), bricks, bubbles (painting the negative), concentric circles, etching lines and create waves with beads on.

There’s nothing that is really difficult to copy, but of course the more experience you have, the better it will look. There is a lot of time and practice that has to go into mastering watercolor “for real” – but even if you never master them, I feel you can have a lot of fun practicing and playing with them. Ana Victoria Calderón will give you permission to play and lots of ideas on what to experiment with.

I’m personally not that interested in painting a beach scene with stones and grass, but the swatching of textures is enough to get me going and I think all of it could be used in my abstracts or art journal. Like she writes:

Creating texture studies is a wonderful way to get the creative juices flowing, which is perfect for those days when you are facing a bit of a creative block. They can lead to new ideas for interesting subject matters for full-scale paintings.

Then she goes on to talk about mixed media textures, using pens and metallic markers on top of the watercolor layers, for example different ways of using white ink, which I think is a marvelous idea. Not new to me, but a good reminder to buy a new white pen for sure.

In the chapter “Inspired textures” we are encouraged to tackle the creative challenge to find textures in our surroundings. Then to copy them using previous described techniques, an exercise to improve your observational skills. There are several big spreads with a photo of a texture and Ana’s watercolor rendering of these texture. Indeed lots to learn, be inspired by and to copy.

Texture swatching from the book Watercolor Textures for Artists: Explore Simple Techniques to Create Amazing Works of Art by Ana Victoria Calderón — A spread of texture swatching from the book “Watercolor Texture” by Ana Victoria Calderón.

Creating watercolor textures as a mindfulness exercise

Then the book contains a few mindfulness exercises to try, something that we should try to access more in this fast-paced world we’re in. It can be so healing to sit down and swirl your paintbrush around, just for fun. I’ve talked about how I find painting, specifically using watercolors, meditative before and this book reminded me of that as well.

In conclusion. Yes, being a fan of watercolors kind of makes me feel that I naturally would be a fan of a watercolor tutorial book, but the fact is that I like this specific one more than most I’ve looked at in my life. I just enjoy Calderón’s choice of colors, style and the overall presentation of this book.

The book “Watercolor Textures for Artists: Explore Simple Techniques to Create Amazing Works of Art” is just as inspiring and colorful to me as her online classes at Skillshare are, and I highly recommend you to check out both options if you want to be watercolor-inspired.

Further Watercolor textures inspiration

* Watercolor textures for Artists – learn more and get the book on Amazon
* Other books by the same author includes Creative Watercolors (A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners) as well as Color Harmony for Artists (How to Transform Inspiration into Beautiful Watercolor Palettes and Paintings)
* Ana Victoria Calderón on YouTube – a few tutorials and other stuff there
* Blog posts on Watercoloring – watercolor experiments and play by yours truly
* Book reviews by iHanna – so many good books on art, craft & creativity

Note: This book was provided to me free of charge for reviewing, a fact that does not influence my opinions in any way. The words and opinions of this book-review are entirely my own, as always. Your trust is important to me, and any recommendations I make are from my heart. Book links to Amazon are always affiliate links and your clicks or purchases will help fuel my need of more books.