Splash Retrospective: 20 Years of Contemporary Watercolor Excellence (Splash: The Best of Watercolor) Hardcover – October 23, 2013

To see how the inside of the book looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKyNVHKoF8Q The Splash series has been around since 1990. Wow, that's a really long history. For all those of you who've never heard of the series; Splash is an international watercolour competition by North Light Books. The winners for each year's competition will have their works published in a Splash book. Splash Retrospective is a book with a compilation of the best of the best from the past winners. I think that was what drew me to buy it. The works are gorgeous and varied, and I enjoyed reading the little captions that were paired beside most of the paintings. The book itself felt sturdy, and the pages were well designed and well printed. It was an utter joy flipping through this book.

Great picture book. You can get a lot out of this book if you look at it from the point of view of "What has been done and how does it apply to me?" It is not any kind of instruction book. Beginners can benefit from this as well as experts.

Excellent collection of truly inspiring watercolors with comments by both artist and the editor / reviewer of the work. I have purchased older annual editions after going through this retrospective. So many idea producing images. If you use watercolors to paint or just enjoy the absolute beauty of well done watercolor paintings, you will want this volume.

Beautiful and inspiring! It is like a trip to an art gallery in the comfort of an easy chair. I enjoy reading the artist comments after I have spent time looking at the picture.

Wow, wow, wow. The artistry is amazing. I very much appreciated the artists' words, whether they be about technique or inspiration. I also enjoyed reading about why Rachel chose to include specific paintings in the collection.

An outstanding book. Each painting is described, and the editor adds a comment on why she liked the selection. The book is divided into 11 categories, e.g. Portraits, Animals, Abstracts, Water Scenes.

The Splash series of books is legendary now. This Retrospective of the best of the best is page offer page of enduring contemporary art as selected from the (so far) fourteen volumes of Splash. Wonder-filled.

Variety is good selection, but some painting are disappointing, probably because it is a style I do not care for in general. I think that is why I have held off buying any of the series.

As the title of the book states, this is a retrospective selection of watercolours drawn from the Splash! publications over the previous 20 years, so if one owns any of the other volumes, expect some duplication.Like the standard books in the series, it follows much the same pattern presenting the work of some 200 artists with 230+ large full-colour reproductions; as an American publication, most of the artists featured are North American and there's a prevalence of that American penchant for photographic realism, but not to the same extent one finds in the standard volumes – on the whole there's a pretty good balance of styles and approaches – even some abstract pieces.As always though, it's a delight to leaf through and certainly of interest to anyone who uses the medium.I note that the current asking prices are in the silly money category, but if it can be found at a reasonable price it's worth snapping up if possible; the “look inside” option above really only covers a small part of the book but one can judge the standard from it.

As a retrospective, I expected a lot better, a LOT better!

What a lovely book, great to see the changes over twenty years. Would thoroughly recommend it. The Splash books are great.

Perfect as the rest of series.

A bumper edition of an interesting collection of paintings. Very good value,