Bring Light to Your World!
Elizabeth celebrates light in the complicated shadows of a fern cast across the elegant simplicity of a calla lily...in the hot colors of a rose contrasting with the ultimate cold of an ultramarine blue background...and, in the way the flower's petals rise and whip the air like flames. Sometime Elizabeth's subjects seem to become light itself, twirling and leaping and captivating their audience like dancers in a ballet.

In this book, Elizabeth invites you to learn her simple steps to painting watercolors infused with light, singing with color, and alive with a feeling of movement and energy.

Choreograph Your Paintings!
Elizabeth's approach involves a gradual build up of bright, luminous color created by layering transparent glazes of pure, unmixed color. While more time-intensive than a one-wash approach, this method allows you to 'feel' your way through the mysteries of a painting, avoiding the need for drastic repairs, and embracing those happy accidents that are the magic in any painting.

'Layering color is an adventure,' Elizabeth muses. 'What will happen if I glaze this color over that' It is like a walk through an undiscovered wood. You're not sure where you are until suddenly you arrive.'

Make Color Sing
Follow Elizabeth's tips and techniques for achieving colors that glow. Her instruction on color and the characteristics of color will help your colors work together to form LIGHT!

Protect Pure Color and Light
Learn how to use masking as a tool to capture the intricate dances of light, giving you the ability to use those big juicy brushes and paint with the freedom that makes watercolors sparkle.

Translate Color into Value'and Back Again
Elizabeth's exercises on the 'value' of color will be your key to creating the illusion of light. She'll help you choose the values that reflect the mood you wish to portray, so that your paintings will communicate LIGHT!

Partner Light and Shadow
You'll discover keys to painting the quality of light, how to capture the transparent quality of shadows, how to portray a time of day or mood, and how to simply have fun with the playful shapes that light and shadow can create.

Establish a Strong Design
Elizabeth's lessons on design and composition will help you grab your viewers and create a path that pulls them to your center of interest, where they stop and then move on, only to return again and again, like a line of dancers weaving around a room.

Make Visual Music!
Paint Watercolors that Dance with Light covers everything you would expect (perspective, panting backgrounds, laying washes), but never in quite the typical way. It also ventures onto some exciting, less-frequented paths, including a whole chapter on how to manipulate the ratio of water to paint to achieve the effects you're after. Every lesson is presented with refreshing spirit and clarity, and each chapter is a manageable length, making it easy to progress through this book at a productive pace.

As a 'grand finale,' Elizabeth leads you through the creation of a painting from beginning to end, 'putting all the steps to music.' Follow along, evoking the strength and boldness of brilliant flowers against a dark background.

Elizabeth's captivating work floods these pages, leaving you eager to choreograph your own dances of light. Find the fuel to your artistic fire, grab your brushes and this book, and let your watercolors dance to the music.

See inside this Book