Artbookreview.net

This is by no means a book for the beginner, but rather a comprehensive review of landscape painting, for the most part in oils, for the serious student and, as such, it’s to be welcomed.

Most of the book is taken up with a discussion of the process of landscape painting and methods of interpreting different subjects, elements, colours, shapes and lighting patterns. There’s a great deal to read, but it’s punctuated with plenty of illustrations that illuminate the text and never leave you struggling for comprehension. The final section of the book is devoted to a series of demonstration paintings of a good variety of subjects and these are discussed in detail rather than being in the form that could almost be described as painting by numbers.

If you’re a landscape painter and you want a book that takes you as seriously as you take your subject, look no further.

Author: Mitchell Albala, Medium: Oil, Publisher: Watson Guptill, Subject: Landscape

Good portrait painting books come along all too infrequently and something which takes the subject seriously and looks at it in such depth as this is to be welcomed. Suzanne Brooker examines every aspect of portrait painting, from style to facial features and expressions to composition and painting methods. There’s a great deal to read here, but there are also plenty of illustrations to leaven and punctuate it so that you’re never left struggling for comprehension. There is a also a generous series of demonstration paintings which are described in some detail. Although, as a result, they have fewer stage illustrations than has perhaps become the norm, they are, I think, more suited to the more technically advanced artist, the sort of person who is likely to be going into portraiture seriously. In any case, the whole book is anything but an introduction for the beginner and will appeal to (and should satisfy) the more demanding reader. It is a large and quite heavy tome that rewards extended study and is admirably comprehensive both in its coverage and its execution of that coverage.

If I have a reservation, it’s perhaps that the style of painting tends rather heavily towards the old-master that’s (admittedly) implied in the subtitle, but it is an American book and American portraiture can be rather like that. I still think you can learn a lot from it, though and I don’t think you’d feel your money was wasted. If that sounds like faint praise, it’s not meant to be.

Author: Suzanne Brooker, Medium: Oil, Publisher: Watson Guptill, Subject: Portraiture

This is probably one of the most serious books on painting around at the moment. Generally speaking, books which place themselves in the art instruction camp concentrate on a how-to approach with plenty of pictures and a limited number of words. This, in its way, is no bad thing. In fact, it’s no bad thing at all, whether it its own or any other way. Painting is, after all, a visual medium and if you can’t explain it visually, well, the chances are you’re not doing it right.

What we have here, and what is certainly the author’s intention, is a look at the practice of painting in oils, taken from the viewpoint of the study of Old Masters (the “traditional” bit) and relating it to materials available today. This is done largely in words and with occasional illustrations to back them. You can, for example, get a dozen or so pages without a single picture, while types of oil and oil-to-pigment ratios are being discussed. There are step-by-step demonstrations – and the author makes it clear that the publisher insisted on more than he originally intended – but they are by no means the backbone of the book and they have something of the feeling of a sidebar about them.

All this sounds dry as dust, but your reaction to it will depend very much on what you’re looking for. If you want a beginner’s guide to how to paint in oils, then it’s fair to say this is not for you. However, if you’re perhaps quite an experienced practitioner, then you could well find that this is an absorbing read (and it is definitely a book to read, not one primarily to look at) going, as it does, into extensive detail of the nature and use of the materials. It reminds me a lot of Ralph Meyer’s Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques; as a source of reference, it’s invaluable and perhaps even second to none.

Watson Guptill 2007
£21.99

Author: Virgil Elliott, Medium: Oil, Publisher: Guild of Master Craftsman, Publisher: Watson Guptill, Subject: Techniques