Skip to main content

Review: Oil Painting Essentials: Mastering portraits, figures, still lifes, and interiors by Gregg Kreutz



Review: Oil Painting Essentials: Mastering portraits, figures, still lifes, and interiors
Gregg Kreutz
Watson-Guptill Publications 
2016

Yes, I go for any bit of help I can find to improve my skills.  Well, improve my attempts at oil painting anyway.  This is not a beginner book, but one for someone who has worked with the medium a bit and has wondered what is it that just makes someone else’s work work and their own not work.  His first eye opener for me was this.  “…the skill of oil painting is not time dependent. It’s insight dependent.” (2)  He had just debunked the paint one a day for a long time and you will arrive theory.  He is not saying that isn’t important just that it takes more.  That is the launch point for this book.  
Product Details 
Kreutz walks the reader through some basic concept and process essentials with examples (Loved the how not to paint a shadow!)  After that he offers lots of good reminders or even new information depending on where the reader is with his oil painting experience in the different genres mentioned in the subtitle.  In these portions of the book he shows how the concept and application he had discussed works within the different areas.  I really appreciated the show and tell aspects.  He provides plenty of examples to illustrate his points.  For those that wish to paint in a style other than the one the author shows for illustrations, I suspect the information is still valid, but maybe with some variation for your own style preference.  I know that in reference to an abstract sort of thing I did some of the comments pertaining to light would have improved the end product. 

Kreutz closes with a this thought.  “Developing as an oil painter, then, requires perseverance, sensitivity, intelligence, compassion, flexibility, and the ability to see the whole instead of the parts.  It’s a lifelong journey, and I don’t’ believe a real artist ever ‘arrives’.” (246)   Hope I can remember that the next time I paint and the time after that. 

I do recommend this book.

I received this book from the publisher in return for a review.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot by Mo Isom

Review: Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot Mo Isom Baker Books 2018 I picked this one up after I’d seen a video promo by the author, http://moisom.com/sexandjesus#.   Sounded like she had something to say.   She does.   And even if you don’t think it applies to you it does in ways that aren’t necessarily related to sex, but just as a human being with desires.    Isom subscribed to many of the conversations that govern relationships in general, and those with men, for her generation, the millennials.   This book is not her life story, but it does describe some moments that were important to her journey then and now.   Her openness to share those times surprised me.   Her point without spoiling the book is that she had not understood what linked sexual intimacy to ordinary life, the why’s, if you will.   Was it not taught, discussed?   Or was she not interested in hearing might be a valid...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: When God’s Ways Make No Sense by Dr. Larry Crabb

Review: When God’s Ways Make No Sense Dr. Larry Crabb Baker Books 2018 I chose this book because the title intrigued me.   When God’s Ways Make No Sense.    There have been plenty of times when that seemed truer than I’d like to admit.   Are we even allowed to say something like that?   Even if we think it.   So, an author willing to take on that topic had my attention. And mostly because I wanted his take on what to do about it? As it turns out Crabb pretty much gave away his case very early on in his book with a single scripture quote.   The basic idea is God is GOD and we are not.   His motives and actions are incomprehensible to mankind and He owes no explanation for them either.   Crabb admits near the end of his book that he is not a theologian which I knew going into this book, but his arguments are theology.   Or at least I think so.   I found his repeated circling the topic a bit frustrating. ...
1 comment
Read more

Review: Anatomy of the Soul

Anatomy of the Soul Curt Thompson. M.D. Salt River, an imprint of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2010 This is the most helpful,insightful book I’ve read in a long time. There’s advice, guidance, explanations and examples to illustrate discussion offered by the author. Best of all, for me anyway, it explains some of what I had suspected about how things work all along. Dr. Thompson links human anatomy and physiology to the spiritual part of our being throughout the text. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And God uses His creation of the physical body in amazing ways. The author does a great job showing God’s wisdom found in research and the discoveries that science has made recently in neuroscience. Whether science wants to or not, it is describing the wonders of creation. Read this book. The text will require thought, evaluation, and time to go through. The author’s writing style is quite readable and he covers the material well. While this isn’t a how to or self help boo...
4 comments
Read more