Traditionally, watercolour paintings have been executed on absorbent, often rough-surfaced papers. This paper introduces to the art of watercolour painting a new suface on which to work - the hot-pressed surface. This extremely smooth surface allows the watercolourist ultimate control of textual effects: it makes possible more precise definition of edges, offers greater opportunity for lifting out and reworking painted areas, and highligts brilliant colours. The hot-pressed surface also responds to all the conventionaltechniques of watercolour. After a disccussion of the necessary studio materials and equipment, this book details the basic techniques of sharp focus watercolour painting with 16 step-by-step demonstrations, including wet-in-wet wash, surface colour mixing, drybrush technique, and more. After eight additional colour demonstrations, there is a gallery of 30 sharp focus watercolour paintings from the Georg Shhok's work.