First, I love Ray Campbell Smith's work, and there is a lot of artwork to enjoy in this book. That's really good enough for me, for the price I paid.As an instructive volume on watercolor it's more theoretical and analytical. Meaning, there are not step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce any of the paintings, but rather there is a preliminary sketch (or two) and the finished painting along with some written thoughts by Mr. Smith regarding the work.I find this to be very interesting and enjoyable, and the value to me as a clumsy watercolorist is that I get some insight into his process or the composition or whatever.He has another volume in a budget series called, I think "Painting Landscapes with Watercolor", which is only about 48 pages long, but it has a few basic step-by-step paintings along with detailed explanations. That's another excellent book, but as I said, it's short.EDIT: I just wanted to add that what I've been doing lately with Watercolor Workout, is working on my sketching by taking portions of the paintings in this book and loosely reproducing them. There are a lot of buildings and boats in these paintings, which are helpful in working on perspective. Having full page prints of 50 paintings is a nice resource to have, and I'm finding it very enjoyable to just pick up this book, flip through it a bit, and then do a quick sketch, working on tonal values and perspective, primarily.I would suggest that those who enjoy Mr. Smith's work will likely enjoy this book as long as you don't go into it expecting detailed painting instruction. In that regard this is perhaps a bit of an unusual book, but I really enjoy it nonetheless.