A practical, stimulating, and superbly illustrated book for the intermediate watercolourist who is looking for greater challenges in their work. Shirley Trevena's watercolours are visually inspiring, vibrant with colour and strong in composition. This book shows what stunning results she achieves and how she does it by taking risks with watercolour. Taking you through her paintings from the first concept to the finished watercolour, Shirley explains and illustrates her techniques for producing exciting, luminous and colourful watercolours. Although watercolour is a difficult medium to handle, Shirley maintains that you get the best results if you have no sense of fear and just let yourself enjoy watercolour's fascinating versatility. In Taking Risks With Watercolour Shirley Trevena teaches her own prize-winning techniques and encourages the reader to experiment with colour, composition and tone to produce exciting still life, landscape and flower paintings. Contents include: * What shall I paint? * Composing a picture * Large scale and small scale * Getting started and making marks * Developing the painting * Taking risks with colour * Experiments with tone * Bold textures and patterns * Getting it wrong * Moving on