Learn how to paint realistic fruit, vegetables, and blossoms with this beautifully illustrated watercolor course. Billy Showell's amazing paintings and vibrant palette are showcased as she clearly explains how to create a huge selection of shapes and textures using detailed step-by-step instructions.

Starting with basic techniques and use of color, Showell shows how to capture the individuality of spiraling artichokes, the smooth contours of aubergines (eggplants), the sumptuous reds of glossy peppers, the cool yellows of bananas, the subtle hues of blossoms, and more.

Using traditional methods, overlaying washes, dry brush techniques, glazing, and masking, Showell develops pictures that are exciting and different, sometimes with an unconventional and amusing twist that takes the images on to new, contemporary levels.

Explanations on drawing, composition, lighting, and painting white subjects are included, along with many different ideas and dozens of useful and helpful tips.

Billy Showell graduated from St. Martins School of Art with a Bachelor of Arts in fashion design, but was irresistibly drawn to painting and illustration. In 1993, she set her course for a career as an artist and now teaches botanical painting in Sevenoaks for The Adult Education Centre. Showell is fascinated by flowers and has long used their forms as her inspiration in her paintings. She lives and paints in Tunbridge Wells with her husband and two children.

Author — Billy Showell.

Hardcover. 128 pages. 8½" × 11½" (22 cm × 29 cm).