Geoff Kersey shows people who have never picked up a paintbrush how to paint convincing watercolor landscapes using just 3 brushes, 3 colors, a plastic palette and a watercolor pad. Only students’ range watercolor paints are used in light red, cadmium yellow pale and ultramarine blue, yet from these, Geoff shows how 9 realistic watercolor scenes can be painted. There is no color theory or long-winded mixing information to put off the first-time painter, but a practical absolute beginner’s course that shows the three colors in action. Only 3 affordable brushes are needed: no. 10, no. 4 and no. 2 rounds in a synthetic range, to achieve all of the paintings shown. Starting from the simplest of scenes, Geoff Kersey builds skills through 9 easy exercises, resulting in landscapes to be proud of. Start with a simple sky and progress through a basic scene with a reflected sunset, to landscapes that include simple buildings and even a figure. Clear advice and step-by-step photographs show how to add a simple figure to a scene and how to trace and transfer the basic drawings from the finished paintings, which are shown full size in the book for this purpose. Readers have everything they need to get painting.

Geoff Kersey is one of our most successful authors, with many best-selling titles to his name. Though known for his detailed and accurate work, Geoff has another less well-known talent – that of taking painting right back to its basics and producing simple but highly effective landscapes using just a few colors and techniques.

He produced a series of DVDs with the SAA entitled ‘Watercolour As If By Magic’, which does exactly what we hope to achieve with our ‘Take Three Colours’ series – to take the reader right back to basics and reveal the secrets of successful watercolor painting through a series of short but effective demos.