Why Must Read Watercolor Workbook: 30-Minute Beginner Botanical Projects on Premium Watercolor Paper?

I'm relatively inexperienced with watercolors, and picked this book up partly for tips, and mostly to have something to paint on nights when I don't feel up to sketching first. For that purpose, it's pretty good. The paper is rave-worthy, and the sketches are varied and pretty interesting. There are some negative things about content and layout, though. PROS: Sketches are big and mostly cool. Great quality paper. End products are pretty fun. CONS: Tiny, pale font is unreadable, so instructions aren't helpful. Too much precise color mixing. Extensive use of white. OVERALL: It's okay. I don't regret buying, but only because of the sketches. Dana Fox's books are slightly better overall if I had to pick one. DETAILS: I don't know how good the instructions are, because the book is practically illegible. It's printed in a tiny font in a sort of dark gray on off-white. If you don't have perfect vision, it's almost more work than it's worth. The sketches are fine if you don't need the instructions, or have the patience to work through reading them under a bright light. She provides mixing recipes for 26 colors. A lot of the images require 7-8 colors, and most of those are mixed, so you can end up mixing ~20 colors per picture. If you don't plan to mix them once and keep them all around in a palette, that's a lot of work for "I don't have energy to sketch tonight." Also, I'm not one of the purists who thinks you shouldn't use opaque white (giving you something more like gouache). However, be aware that literally 2/3 of her mixes use a lot of white. If your goal is to practice watercolors, you should know that using white this way is fairly unusual, as it blunts the transparency that makes layering possible. I've closely matched most of those colors with fewer, more traditional paints.