The New Color Mixing Companion: Explore and Create Fresh and Vibrant Color Palettes with Paint, Collage, and Mixed Media--With Templates for Painting Your Own Color Patterns

Josie Lewis, dear St. Josie, gave me permission to make a mess and to play. I've been studying watercolor with a genuine American Watercolor Society artist for over a year, and while I adore those studio lessons, it is Josie who helped me combat blocks to having more fun and overcoming perfectionist tendencies. When I first received her book, I was put-off about adding black or white to colors, almost sinful to "real" watercolorists, and I still don't use white or black to get tints and shades, but I started playing, having fun, letting myself learn from mistakes. Mistakes became my friends! The other day I painted three really messed up small things. EEEEK! I had been experimental and used big flower punches as both stencils and for "negative painting." Also, I really overworked another piece that was embarrassing. The really bad piece became fodder for punching out birds and butterflies. Hey, why couldn't I make a collage? I show these messed up pieces because by the time I did some punching of shapes and used my imagination, inspired by Josie and her punched out hexagons, I felt quite ok. My teacher told me "never throw anything out." That advice works with what Josie Lewis encourages her reading students to do. While I don't think these little reworked pieces are gorgeous, I had FUN saving them. If this book doesn't inspire you to persevere no matter what kind of muddy blobs you end up with using watercolors, I'm not sure there's a book out there to help. The writing is excellent and highly readable to the point where you can hear Josie's voice come through in both her text AND her artwork. Initially I wished this book didn't have acrylics and gouache included. I was being too much of a purist! I'm not likely to use either of those mediums, but they are still valuable in terms of learning how to enjoy the companionship of new friends: "Play," "Mistake" and "Fun." The ONLY thing I'd disagree with Josie about is her advice on page 14 about starting cheap with supplies. I did this, and found the quality of brushes and paint pigment consistency was discouraging. So, I upscaled my supplies, went with Daniel Smith watercolors and got some decent (not expensive) brushes. The better properties of the higher quality pigments and the more reliable brushes made a huge difference, even when painting failures! BUY THIS BOOK!

Josie's integration of insights about triggering and tapping into one's flow (transient hypofrontality) makes this book unique! They are presented conversationally in lay language throughout the book.This book's content is exceptionally well-organized and usefully organized! The projects are labeled by challenge level: Beginner, Moderate, and/or Advanced. They are also clustered and indexed by medium: Watercolor, Acrylic, Collage. Each project has the same layout which makes it easy to follow and find information, including its Mess Level. Project instructions are clear and well-photographed. The project templates downloaded easily.The book itself is sturdy. It has heft (1.5 lbs.) and is bound using stitched signatures. The page papers are not annoyingly glossy are heavy enough to prevent highlighting and other markups from bleeding through. It broke in nicely! (The attention to quality you can expect from publisher Quarry/Quarto.)I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience the capacity of art to stimulate personal and artistic growth, relaxation and/or healing.

Josie Lewis is an amazing talented artist who has a supurb grasp of color theory and an amazing way of controlling her paintbrush that brings out the most beautiful textures and designs, Her artwork sings with beautiful color, each one of her color meditations more wonderful than the last. She does give background on the materials she uses or how she goes about creating each of her gorgeous meditations. Ms. Lewis is a watercolorist by trade but she does branch out to other mediums both inside this book and in her life, which was both challanging and fun for me to try for myself. She has a unique grasp of color theory and I highly recommend her book to everyone. 5* +++++++

I got my copy this week, after a small delay from internal mail delivery at my work (safer than delivery to my apartment). I LOVE IT! It's a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Quality paper and printing, the images and color pops so beautifully. Your commentary displays so much information as well as your sparkling personality. I love your style in your videos, and I can just hear you in my head as I read the text in the book... hehehe... makes me smile. I'm not really a painter at all, but I love color and I love knowing about various mediums. Even not being a painter, this is a treasure trove and I am so happy you are sharing it with us all. I will be trying out some of the tutorials with templates for sure, as I feel they are very easy to follow even for a non-painter. (I have used various mediums in the past: some wood, ceramic/clay, metal (jewelry/chainmaille), with my favorite and supreme medium being glass via lampworking - but only ever dabbled with art type painting.) Thank you for sharing your process and knowledge!

If you're a mixed media painter you'll love this book.I'm a beginner watercolor painter so I was looking for a book on watercolor. I'm glad that amongst the projects for other mediums there are watercolor exercises.What I didn't anticipate is that Josie Lewis created a watercolor pallet designed specifically for this book which you have to order separately.This was slightly frustrating because I couldn't start working with the book until the paints came in the mail from her website. However, for $35 you not only get her professional grade pallet but also 4 round golden taklon brushes in there own case. I was pleasantly surprised.Flipping through the book is inspiring and it makes me want to try doing some of the other mediums.The book is colorful, inspiring and easy to follow. A fun book once you have all of the supplies.

The book is so well written and organised, author feels very approachable and keeps the text so engaging while share it stories and anecdotes around her experiences with colours and different activities to better understand the usage of colour. If you are into geometrical patterns, this book and the projects will prove to be a sheer delight! Loved the exercise/ projects easy to follow and would definitely recommend!

I loved this book so much. I'm in a real creativity struggle these days as I suffer from PTSD and so I'm not in such great shape mentally. Yet this book inspired me a lot. I was a always drawing in black and white with my pencil as a kid and then I stopped drawing altogether and recently wanted to pick it up again, and this book inspired me and reminded me how beautiful color is. It's such a relaxing, kind read where the author also shares her struggles and a lot of creative ideas that I'm in love with. Honestly, even if I didn't try any of the projects ( and i did, and it was fun) I'd already consider myself changed positively simply by the read. Now i just want to try new things and blend colors together. I'd definitely recommend it and I wish the best for the author (who's a really good writer by the way)·

I like this book a lot. It is clearly written with lots of good ideas and illustrations. I use it for both my own education and gathering art ideas to use with my 11 year old granddaughter

Not as good as I hope it would be. It focused more on water colour, and construction paper art.

Love this book. So bright and inspiring. :)