The Return

Review: Portrait Revolution: Inspiration from Around the World for Creating Art in Multiple Mediums and Styles Julia Kay, editor Watson-Guptill Publications 2017 What a great little book to thumb through!   I’m an admirer of art more than an artist.   Had to put that disclaimer up first, but admirers have a bit of role in the making of art, too.   Kay assembled the work of quite a few folks who used several different mediums and approaches for this one.   Each page was a new scene for me. Art on a phone?!   New kind of crayons? Yep, that can happen.   And as I read through the comments from her and those that presented their work here I found ideas I hadn’t seen before, products used I’d not heard of, and some down to earth advice from bunches of people.   The publishers used some nice paper and printing for this collection, and that added to my enjoyment.   I like books that feel like books and images that reveal marks from...

Review: Lessons in Classical Painting: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier Juliette Aristides Watson-Guptill 2016 Good basic instruction here in increments that if followed will help just about anyone improve their skills.   For the more advanced that have hit a snag this would be a good review to work through just to check your technique for the “little” things that matter.    Each chapter talks the reader through the lesson and gives progressive pictures to show what the words cannot convey.   Talk about lighting and shadows all you want, but a picture gives me that aha moment where all the words come to make more sense.   Each lesson builds on the previous one which for the impatient sorts will chafe considerably.   But that’s way forward in art it seems.    Planning and more planning to get the right light, colors, and form will become part of the routine.   Value strips abound.   Tedious stuff, but tr...

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.      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 remi...