My Year in Watercolour: Easy painting ideas and techniques, season by season

A stylish beginner's guide to water-cooling your way through the seasons, from French artist and designer Lou Ripoll.

Paint your way through the year with this gorgeous beginner's guide to seasonal water-cooling.

This fresh modern method invites you to explore watercolor techniques by painting simple, contemporary subjects. There's no need for any preparatory drawings - just jump right in! Each technique is approached through a model broken down into a maximum of 6 easy-to-follow steps.

As the seasons pass, you'll soon master techniques such as wet-on-wet, glazes, shadows, gradients and blending. In spring, learn to paint strawberry bushes and flowers in bloom; in summer, paint sailing boats and sunbathers; for autumn, you'll find adorable squirrels and piles of fallen leaves; and in winter, cozy cups of tea and little ice skating figures. The more you paint, the more you'll discover that it's the imperfections and unpredictability of watercolor that make this medium so beautiful.