No-Fail Watercolor: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Painting with Confidence

by Mako

With over 2 million subscribers on YouTube, Mako is one of the most popular online watercolor teachers. Working primarily with beginners, she knows exactly what new painters struggle with and how to build their confidence. Her book is divided into chapters on various techniques like glazing, wet on dry, wet on wet and how to make your watercolor more magical—with her special tips and tricks on how to master each one.

Each chapter begins with a tutorial and practice space for each technique, as well as mini tutorials on common mistakes like how to get the right texture with your paintbrush or how to keep your paint from looking blotchy. She also includes projects like beautiful snowy landscapes, galaxies, and more with each chapter so that readers can put all of their knowledge into a beautiful completed piece of art. Every tutorial and project is easy, approachable, and can be completed in just a few easy steps.

Printed on high-quality watercolor paper, readers can follow along step by step and utilize every page for practice space.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Crafts, Reference

168 pages, Paperback

Published January 19, 2021

About the author

Librarian note: there is more than one author using the same name.

▪ Mako (default profile)
▪ Mako . (まこ .) (novelist)
▪ Mago . (まご) (mangaka)
▪ ｍａｋｏ . (mangaka)
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Reviews

[Zendegi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an overall good beginner watercolor book. I currently identify as a beginner and definitely learned quite a bit from the book.

Pros:
- The projects have great photos for the various steps.
- Really good practice in doing washes and layering them.
- The instructions are pretty clear for most techniques.
- Definitely appropriate project difficulties for the advertised target audience of beginners.
- Several alternative versions are included at the end of most of the projects, with different colors, embellishments, etc.

Cons:
- Sometimes the photos of the steps along the way are clearly from different versions (not talking about the alternatives at the end). This is a bit confusing. Wish the project photos were numbered along with the steps.
- The instructions for painting water were pretty confusing to me, and I struggled to get descent results with her method of blurring waves. I did improve at the end by using a very dry brush.
- Projects got repetitive, especially towards the end of the book.
- Sometimes her word choice is misleading - such as "load up your brush with paint," when you actually want very little on the brush to achieve the effect. Learned this with trial and error.

[Bobby Baden · Rating 5 out of 5]

great for beginners like me

I loved this book… I’m a total beginner, but she makes it so easy to follow! I enjoy Mako’s YouTube channel, which will help if you can’t picture in your mind what she describes in words. These projects are beautiful but doable. Fun to read and paint along!

[Bine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this is a thorough instruction to learn about watercolour. There is a lot of theory and many step-by-step projects to put that into practice.

[Cindy Bale Tanner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent how to book for every watercolor artist. Mako gives easy to follow instructions. The resulting artworks are classic and iconic. I highly recommend this book.

[Rachael M · Rating 5 out of 5]

From very basic beginner mountains to advanced ocean with many washes of color, this is one of my favorite watercolor books on the market. Mako's technique makes watercolor very accessible and quite easy for anyone to follow along. She tells you what you'll need at the beginning of each exercise with helpful tips throughout her step by step instructions. Her style is fun but impactful! She also includes some technical info that if you're just starting you'll need to know- like color theory and the rule of thirds. The only thing I would change is a little more variation in exercises...I've done enough mountains, trees, and lakes to last a lifetime!

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

short: a very basic, useless ego trip.

a very rudimentary text, with lots of useless information. somehow they are the ones who have written the only book on watercolor, so they need to waste space with the most basic stuff on paper and brushes. back in the 1888, that would have been ground breaking, but I bet back in 1888 the author would have written a book on sorting manure. Everything in here can be found in the very basic videos of YouTube. And if you are on that site, you would find tutorials on aspects beyond the grasp of this author.

[Angelina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I follow Mako on YT. No-Fail Watercolors offers various projects from beginner to advanced. Art Fundamentals are included to give the reader a solid foundation of color theory and how watercolor works. Just a gorgeous book!

[Tarsius Sp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so happy I bought this book. It is very didactic and helpful, and Mako is very encouraging the result being that I paint almost every day! There are detailed steps for each painting, several themes and levels of difficulty. On top of all that, the book itself is gorgeous.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific exercises

This is one of the best books for offering a variety of exercises for beginner and intermediate exercises complete with a palette of colors used in each exercise. Excellent book for improving watercolor skills.

[Jeanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good beginning watercolor book. There is very little drawing to be done. Just sit down and start painting. Many of the lessons can be personalized. This makes a great companion to Mako’s YouTube channel.

[Jovy Merryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous and well-written book. The amount of knowledge you get to experience here is massive and the constant encouragement of Mako is such a huge bonus! This is highly recommended!

[Anastasia Tuckness · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed painting a ship on waves from this book--she laid out each step and it gave me a lovely result plus more confidence in some painting techniques.

[Shirley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very instructional and plainly written.

[Krystal 🦢 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m using this as a workbook for a teen watercolor class. I like that the projects in here teach technique, and that they build in each other throughout the book.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started with watercolor this book and the author's videos were some I turned to for positive vibes and simple approaches to watercolor. She makes the projects very accessible.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great addition to her online tutorials.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of easy little tutorials but there's nothing substantial in the info sections. She skims very lightly over each topic but I guess that sells more books.