5 comments about First Steps Painting Acrylics (First Step Series).

1. I like this instructional book very much. It has a lot of information about the products needed to paint with acrylics and good ideas too. I just wish I had more time to use the book! I'm soon starting a new art class, Life Drawing. Perhaps I will be able to use some of my new knowledge to create a masterpiece!



2. This book like so many so-called beginner's acrylics books follows the usual pattern: a chapter on materials (this book's section is rather sketchy) and then an immediate huge jump into technique. Right after the sketchy materials section the author devotes a chapter on composition before getting into technique. The technique chapter is not very helpful; it shows you a catalog of the results of various techniques but provides no real help in how to achieve them. On the plus side the paintings shown (and there are lots of them) are appealing to me; however, I after reading the book I wouldn't have the slightest chance of even making a faint resemblance of them.
   
   As my growing collection of unsatisfactory "beginner's" acrylics shows (the nearest big bookstore is almost three hours away) there is a huge difference between a gifted artist and a gifted art teacher, though in fairness what is probably lacking are gifted art instruction authors. When writing these books they apparently don't have any reader feedback (why not?) who could slow them down by asking questions like how do I thin the paint, how thing should it be, what's the best way to mix colors, how do I clean the brushes, how do I keep the paint from drying out on my palette or my painting, etc., etc., etc.
   
   The only painting book I've found so far which can truly claim to be a beginner's book is Jack Reid's "Watercolor Basics: Let's Get Started". That book is full of exercise paintings that let the reader learn a technique on a simple painting; the paintings are simple enough so that the beginner doesn't get lost in the detail yet have some artistic character.



3. I love this book. It is very good for the beginner-----and I mean for someone who has never picked up a brush. I have really enjoyed it.



4. I purchased three books about acrylic painting and find this book to have the best instruction and information of the three. I would reccommend this book.



5. Not a lot of information in this book (i.e. 'tiny lines must be drawn with an inky or soupy like substance'. However the book does not tells you how to get this substance. Water, a medium or what and how much?).
   
   Much book space has been spent on showing paintings.

5 comments about The Painter in Oil.

1. I was looking for a book on realistic painting theory, and that's exactly what this is. It starts with details about what sort of paints will last the longest, what makes a good brush, how to stretch a canvas properly, etc.
   
   Next it talks about general ideas, like how colors and values relate to shading, and how to draw properly (drawing is the foundation of good painting).
   
   In the last part of the book, it covers specifics, like how to paint a good still life, and how to paint figures.
   
   This book isn't a formula book, like something from Bob Ross, but gives you in depth theory and a detailed look into the neoclassical style of painting. It was written in the late 1800's, so the writing has a certain charm, but it isn't difficult to read at all.
   
   The book itself is very sturdy and the font is easy to read.



2. If your interested in oil painting and the theories behind it, this book is for you. Written about 100 years ago, the author treats you as a student as he explains the various materials and methods for a successful painting. From early sketches, to rough studies, to completed works, you should find what your looking for here.



3. I am amazed at how much Parkhurst knew about painting. Much of this knowledge has been lost to many contemporary art schools so I am very thankful Parkhurst took the time to write this book. It takes a little while to get past his older writing style but it is not too bad. He has a great sense of humour that comes through as well.



4. Great. Clear and concise neo-classical painting technique coupled with beautiful writing on the subject of perception. Soulful.
   
   From the book:
   
   The painter should not be hampered by process; he should not be controlled in the expression of himself by tradition. He should feel free to use any or all means to bring about the result he aims at, and he should allow no tradition or point of view to prevent him from selecting whichever means will most surely or, satisfactorily bring about his true purpose.



5. One of the best books on painting I have read. Old copies have always been way out of my price range.
   There are a few minor typos that I assume are from digital scanning that were not caught, but the book was in great shape and shipped fast.

1 comments about Winsor & Newton Colour Mixing Guide: Oils: A Visual Reference to Mixing Oil Colour (Winsor & Newton Color Mixing Guides).

1. This has been a great guide for my wife. She recently decided to switch from pastel to oil, and needed a basic idea of how to mix the colors. Check out her website: http://www.emilyroeart.com in the coming weeks to see how it turned out!

No comments about Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

5 comments about Luminous Landscapes: Quilted Visions in Paint and Thread.

1. Luminous Landscapes: Quilted Visions in Paint and Thread A beautiful book with helpful techniques.



2. Luminous Landscapes exceded all my expectations. I was fortunate to attend Gloria's workshop in 2004 in Durban, South Africa and enjoyed every minute. It is wonderful to have the book now to refresh my mind, to give more inspiration and to learn new techniques. The book is very good worth for money and very well and clearly illustrated. Instructions are easy to follow. I can highly recommend it to fellow-quilters.



3. Just as the title describes, this book is filled with luminous, georgous quilts and every secret you need to know on how to make your own. Gloria has given detailed instructions and methods on how to create every aspect of landscapes, backgrounds, forgrounds, sky, oceans, animals along with details on how to combine fabrics, apply paint and she has even included patterns. This book is easy to understand and recommended for beginners or advanced quilters wanting to take their creative abilities to a new level.



4. I like this book because it shows me lots of different ways to make designs on fabrics. I can use them in my own designs. Don`t have to make copys of others designs.



5. 
   
   This book is one of the best I've seen. There are some well written and well-organised sections dealing with the principles of composition, colour and stitching techniques. Gloria usually starts her landscapes with a painted background, so she gives a short well-illustrated section on fabric painting. Most of that stuff is available elsewhere, but it is assembled and illustrated particularly well.
   The second half of the book contains details of her construction methods. One of those is using freezer paper on the right side of the fabric for appliqued shapes. The second - her signature style - is pieced sections on point, blended into the applique design. She gives clear diagrams
   and inspiring examples of this technique. She then gives some examples of how to achieve different effects for trees, water and reflections. There is a gallery of student work, and two fully illustrated projects with paper patterns included at the back.
   In my view this is excellent value, a perfect blend of practical tips and inspiration.

No comments about House Proud: Nineteenth Century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection.

5 comments about Andy Warhol Portraits.

1. Everyone is familiar with Andy Warhol's famous portraits like the Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Mao. But fewer people know the many portraits he did of famous, glamourous, or simply wealthy patrons.
   
   I have read the Andy Warhol Diaries, his Philosophy book and other Warhol related works, so it is now very interesting to see what his many portraits look like. They are each colorful, creative and interesting.
   
   The book is a nice hard-bound large format coffee-table edition.



2. This is an execellent recource for someone looking to see all of Warhol's ouvre - it includes practically all there is to see from his portraits. I loved it but I would only recommend it to someone with specific interest in the subject. Otherwise some other book featuring less but more varied works woud be more appropriate.



3. When most people think of Andy Warhol, images of Campbell's soup cans and a vividly colored Chairman Mao come to mind. For those who know Warhol better, memories also include Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, most wanted posters, and self-portraits of the artist.
   
   What few appreciate is that portraiture was the bread-and-butter that Warhol used to finance his experimental work at the Factory. Before this book, you could not see the full range of this work. Unframed and grouped with similar and complementary works in the same time period, these 300 portraits show a considerable range of style and expression that will be a new perspective for all but collectors of Warhol portraits. I found the work to be so impressive that it totally changed my sense of who Warhol was as an artist.
   
   In this book, the portraits do the talking. The brief essays merely describe the processes that Warhol used and that he tried to make people look good . . . and larger than life. But you knew that already, didn't you?
   
   The range of the ways he captured the spirit of his subjects is what's most impressive in this volume. Repetition of the same image in one work with different treatments could help us see many different expressions of the person (see Natalie 1962). In other places, many images of the same person in one work express mood, movement, and a story (see Sixteen Jackies 1964). In other cases, multiple images of the same subject give us deep insight into personality (see Ethel Scull 1963). In other cases, the multiple images show the reality as well as the personality (see Merce Cunningham 1963 and Triple Rauschenberg 1963).
   
   Exploring different use of colors and backgrounds, Warhol could totally change our emotions as viewers (Silver Liz 1963 gives us a sense of coolness and elegance while Liz 1963 shows a woman of great emotion and passion).
   
   In Warhol's process, subjects were photographed around 100 times using a Polaroid camera. The subject then picked the images (or image) that she or he liked best. The images were turned into silk screens. Then, Warhol added the background and color to capture what the mere shape could not. The degree of focus also creates more or less power and immediacy (compare Donald Judd 1967 and Robert Rauschenberg 1967).
   
   The portraits also create dialogues, such as when married couples had their portraits done around the same time. In the book, these images are often on facing pages. You'll be arrested to see Nelson Rockefeller 1967 and Happy Rockefeller 1968 looking off into the same spot in space . . . but not each other. The color overlap is minimal, emphasizing their differences.
   
   These images are even more arresting when the pair are portrayed looking away from one another as with Gianni Agnelli 1972 and Marella Agnelli 1972.
   In places, painterly backgrounds add remarkable depth and power to the images as with the Agnellis.
   
   In places, the painterly treatment is sufficient to remind one of the work of Degas such as Lee Radziwell, 1972.
   
   Portrait creators have always arranged sitters carefully to emphasize a certain point. Warhol does this in a very minimal way, often adding more than part of a hand touching the face or a bit of clothing. Because of its slight use, the impact is much stronger.
   
   How do the subjects fare? Those with strong personalities do best. Those with complex personalities are rendered beautifully, but aren't as accessible. Subjects who want to look physically attractive often appear merely decorative, like a background model at a party.
   
   Warhol's talent can best be seen by comparing the various ways he renders eyes. Male and female subjects alike receive slashes of color that sometimes resemble eye shadow and other times seem like tiny masks.
   
   There isn't much that's soulful about these works. They are more about promotion than about moral uplift. It's all the more surprising when that soulfulness appears as in Farah Dibah Pahlavai (Empress of Iran) 1977.
   
   Seeing Judy Garland 1979 and Liza Minelli 1979 made me wish that Warhol had done more mother-daughter combinations. These two stunners crawl right inside you.
   
   Part of Warhol's art comes in knowing something about the person. Where the subject is unknown, you'll find yourself a little more baffled about what the message is. Think of each of the celebrity portraits then as being in part a reflection of the public image and our current perceptions. Warhol uses this celebrity awareness to good purpose in creating very minimal works that express the dominant impression of a person (see Martha Graham 1980).
   
   As his career continued, the works became more daring. I was particularly drawn to the line drawings with bold bands of color such as in Paul Delvaux 1981 and Jean Cocteau 1985.
   
   Some of these portraits will cause you to stop and rethink what you know about the people. I had that reaction to the pairing of Prince Charles 1982 (coolly displayed as a young symbol of the monarchy) with the almost flirtatious Princess Diana 1982 (appearing as a powerful force with an earthy grounding).
   
   The portrait of John Lennon is simply stunning (1985-86).
   
   For a good sense of Warhol's progress, you'll enjoy seeing many of his self-portraits.
   
   Enjoy a good look!



4. This book enables the reader to discover some rarely seen paintings by Warhol, representing many personalities from the sixties, seventies and eighties, from O.J. Simpson to Pelé, from the Queen of England to the Shah of Iran, artists, art dealers, art collectors, musicians (John Lennon...), actors, fashion designers and friends of the artist's. Even though it was this kind of work that drew the harshest criticism (Robert Hughes, critic for Time Magazine, dubbed Warhol the new Van Dongen, meaning by that that he only painted superficial portraits of the rich and famous of his time), they still show the scope and depth of Warhol's creative power. The book is lavishly illustrated and the text was written by leading Warhol authorities (dealer or critic). A very complete checklist of all the portraits illustrated is given at the end of the book. A valuable addition to the albeit extensive Warhol literature.



5. Andy Warhol is one of the best known American artists of the 1960s and renowned for his uncoventional life and art as well as is enduring influence on American pop culture. An influence that continues down to the present time several decades after his death. Famous for his iconic images of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell Soup Cans, he also made art out of the facial images of political, social, entertainment, sports, and music celebrities of his day. This particular body of his work has been compiled and edited by Tony Shafrazi, who enhances this 320-page coffee table art book with 350 color illustrations and informative essays by art critic Carter Ratcliff and art historian Robert Rosenblum. The men and women whose images were made immortal by Warhol range from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Giorgio Armani, Truman Capote, Jimmy Carter, Joan Collins, Clint Eastwood, Herman Hesse, Alfred Hitcock, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Lenin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Liza Minnelli, Princess Diana, Yves Saint Laurent, O.J. Simpson, Elizabeth Taylor, Tennessee Williams, Natalie Wood, Mao Zedong, and hundreds of others. An important contribution to academic library 20th Century American Art History reference collections, "Andy Warhol Portraits" is a 'must' for the personal collections of Warhol's legions of admirers.

5 comments about Renoir, My Father (New York Review Books Classics).

1. A decent if disjointed book. You can tell from reading it that Jean had great respect for his father and loved him very much. Unfortunately, there was a large gap between his father's death and the writing of this book, with Jean working from memory and not notes, and it shows. There are times where it's hard to see where Renior stops and Jean starts, and this can make things a bit confusing. If you are a fan of Renior's however,don't pass this book up.



2. A biography written by a child of someone famous often carries more than one burden, similar to the responsibility or encumbrance of the overshadowing parental fame. However, in filmmaker Jean Renoir's lovingly detailed remembrances of his Impressionist painter father, the reader gleans more than a timeline of an artist's rise to prominence. The author shares a richly detailed account of life in a culture that--in most areas of France save for Paris--was still foremostly agrarian. In this burgeoning Industrial world, Renoir tells of the rise of his father's art and the changing cultural behaviors, shifting societal patterns and troubling questions within that framework.
   
   Beginning at Louis-Philippe's "July Monarchy" (1830-1848)-- generally seen as a period during which the haute bourgeoisie was dominant and the 1840's which saw financial crisises and bad harvests with an ensuing economic depression--we are reminded of the general and specific trends vis-à-vis how they affected the Renoir family's world. Curiously descriptive, this was a world of street oil lamps and chamber pots; anesthesia was not yet invented (nor any antiseptics); butchers slaughtered the animals on site in the back of the shop; great debates about the inferior railroad system and the overall safety of locomotives were waged (could a pregnant woman harm her unborn child by moving a such great speeds? Did the smoke and soot emitted hinder crops in nearby fields from growing). Adding to the vivid and graphic storytelling of French life are vignettes of the senior Renoir's dealings with fellow Impressionists and art dealers as well as his painting process behind some of his masterpieces. Family life, the defining touchstone of the artist as a man, is shared in humorous and matter-of-fact style ("My mother brought a great deal to my father: peace of mind, children whom he could paint; and a good excuse not to have to go out in the evening.") This book, which was first published in the mid-1950's, affords the reader a complete picture of the life of a great artist during a time of vicissitude and excitement in all facets of French society.



3. An affectionate remembrance of Renoir by his son, concentrating the years up to the turn of the century.
   
   Renoir considered himself an artisan rather than an artist, disliked anything artificial, from margarine to ready-to-wear clothes, had among his friends artists, and musicians who are household names today. "It is when you have lost your teeth that you can buy the best beefsteak" he would say, and considering that he became more infirm with age, this truism affected him no less than the rest of us.



4. We adopted "Renoir, My Father" as bedside reading while my wife was recovering from hip surgery, and (aside, perhaps, from "Goodnight, Moon,") I can't imagine better therapy. This is odd, in a way: Claude was an old man (and in pain) when Jean got to know him, and Jean was an old man when he finally brought his recollectios together. You might expect cranky, but nothing of the sort: it's a book full of sunny afterglow. Every parent would hope to be rememnbered so well.

   The book might take a bit of getting used to: Jean has his own pace and his own way of telling his story. We did it in small doses and I'm not certain yet that I quite catch the rhythm. None of the rough edges have been smoothed off which, come to think of it, is just as Claude would have wanted: Jean speaks with his own voice. You have to listen well, but you know that the voice is nobody else's.

   I suppose it helps to know a bit about the Impressionists to enjoy it all, but I can't say I know all that much, and I didn't feel impaired. Anyway, God bless Google: more than once, when Jean talked about a painting or a subject, I key-clicked my way to an image and completed (as it were) the picture.

   Kudos also to NYRB (this time) for producing what it does not always produce: a finished physical specimen The paper feels like quality; the binding is sturdy, and there is a small but satisfying selection of pictures, both colored and black-and-white. There is even an index of sorts (I assume from the original translator) but it is patchy and incomplete. That last is a shortcoming, but forgivable in light of the book's other virtues. In the NYRB firmament, this is surely a star.




5. Impressionism is my favorite style of painting so I was really enchanted with this biography. Written by Renoir's middle son, Jean, Renoir, My Father not only gives us an intimate look at the life of Auguste Renoir, it gives us an intimate look at the Paris of Renoir's day as well.

   As we get to know Renoir we get to know his contemporaries, too. Jean Renoir writes about Monet, Cezanne, Manet, Sisley and many other great artists. We learn many "little known" facts, such as Monet's penchant for lace and his "artful" way with the ladies.

   Paris really comes alive in this book. Many of the places Renoir writes about still exist and can be visited today. This book makes any art lover's trip to Paris more meaningful whether he's a Renoir fan or not.

   When reading this book, one must remember that this is not a "run of the mill" biography. This is a son writing about the father he adored. The portrait we are given is very intimate, detailed and loving. It's obvious that Jean Renoir adored his father, just as Auguste Renoir adored his family.

   Ultimately, this book is a beautiful tribute from a loving son to a father who was one of history's consummate artists. If you have any interest at all in art, this is one book you simply must not pass up. The last page alone will break your heart.

5 comments about Caravaggio.

1. 
   the quality of the research and the color of the paintings are outstanding.
   Also the CD-ROM has an unbelievable amount of information on the artist's
   works and their provenance.
   Dr.John T. Spike's 20 years of research is shared with the reader and is so readable and engaging.



2. The reproductions are excellent. The binding is fine and the cover handsome. The writing is solid academically. I would have liked the book to have had more information on the artist and his life. Much is left to be done in the study of Caravaggio. His life still seems to be quite mysterious. His probable use of optics and mirrors in his work is touched on and needs further exploration. This book provides a good introduction to Caravaggio and his paintings in a handsome package.



3. Great book on the greatest of all Italian painters. Glorious plates. And the text is a pretty good bio.



4. My husband and I just came back from Italy and we had to have a Caravaggio book. His painting in Vatican museum was especially memorable! I picked this book and it is very good. I agree with the earlier comments that some (not "many") pictures are poor quality (too red), but many photographs are very good, nice size for an art book and very important - it is an interesting and detailed research.



5. My library contains many various volumes on the subject of Caravaggio--fiction, biography, fictionalized biography and photo surverys of his works--but if I were allowed only one book on this most extradordinary painter and his life I'd take "Caravaggio" by John T. Spike. In this weighty large-format picture-book Mr. Spike has given us the most complete look at the artist and his works currently available, presented in graceful depth so as to engage any interested reader and art enthusiast regardless of the nature of his commitment. It's unusual to find such an authoritative colaboration of art historical expertise and first quality illustration as we have here, a book to read, study and savor.

3 comments about A History of Icon Painting.

1. Gives us a very good idiea of the history of icon painting. Very good ilustations.



2. The book presents a geographical history of the icon. Very good quality with the images and the paper. A great work that makes you understand the icon with a great deal of examples.



3. I am an iconographer and the priest who taught me everything I know gave me this book. Unlike many of the icon books I own, it gives a more detailed description of each icon. It also has many inset photos of the icons so that you may study details better. It is inexpensive and contains a wealth of knowledge. If you are looking for more information on this beautiful and sacred art, this is a good start.