No comments about Painting and Decorating Wooden Spoons: 100 Step-by-Step Projects for Making People, Animals, and Fantasy Characters from Wooden Spoons.

5 comments about Drawing and Painting Animals: How to Capture the Essence of Wildlife Art.

1. This is a very special book. Aldrich covers everything an aspiring (or experienced) artist wants to know on the process of creating magnificant animal artwork. Aldrich's work is an inspiration to those of us who dream of creating a piece as beautiful as the ones that are on display in his book. The pictures alone are worth the price. On a practical note, I learned quite a bit by looking at the tools he uses, the different mediums (and combinations) and the step by step process (which includes pictures). I also highly recommend "Painting Animals that touch the heart" by Lesley Harrison. If you love Aldrich... you'll love Harrison.



2. This is a terrific reference on accurate rendering
   of animals. If you are interesting in techniques
   that help you capture the look in the eyes, realistic
   fur and that something that makes the picutre come
   alive this is a very helpful resource.



3. I was looking for a book on wild animal paiting and a friend of mine just picked this book from a shelf and said... I think this is like your taste.
   After reading from cover to cover in just one night, I was impressed by the way I felt about the book. It has quite a lot of writing on it, but the kind of writing that inspires you to explore, think and feel about art and wild life art. It has hints, but not the kind of "take this for granted because it works". Instead, the book stimulates you to find out what suits you better, never creating rigid parameters.
   Well, the overal feeling was that somehow Mr. Aldrich has written a journal about his toughts on art and wildlife art, and that he is kindly sharing his long way trip with the reader.
   An awesome book and the one to which I come whenever I need a boost, not only for art pourposes, but also when I need a cheer up in my mood.



4. Loads of material on creating feathers fur and expressions.
   The author covers the practical little details you need to learn
   and in several demonstration sequences he puts everything
   together. You can see the work "becoming". Very helpful reading
   for anyone wanting to make realistic pieces with animal
   subjects. I loved the section 'dealing with the blahs' which
   addresses the point at which you go stale on a piece your are
   working on.



5. The book is concise, it doesn't reinvent the wheel. It knows you want to paint and that you know some basics. It also has just enough review if you need it so that you have a quick overview. The strength of the book is that visual and text explanations really work, step by step is a plus also. I recommend it . You will get more out of it than most sets of instructional books give you. My work is better and I am happier for buying it. NormaJean

1 comments about Matt's Old Masters: Titian, Rubens, Velasquez, Hogarth.

1. Art history can be painfully dull, but not when you're reading Matthew Collings. This guy is so passionate about art that you can't help but share in his excitement about these four great masters from history. Somehow he manages to bring these artists to life -- to show us their worlds, to explain why they were important figures in their own times, to reveal what the artists themselves loved about art, and to illustrate how we're still seeing the ramifications of these artists in art today. Along the way, he brings in lots of comparisons and extra info about plenty of other great masters. Of all the art history books I've read, this one is really special -- a favorite I'll read again. Loaded with fantastic four-color reproductions, too!

No comments about Painting Buildings in Watercolor.

1 comments about The Invention of Art: A Cultural History.

1. This book is tough going at times but the result is a major contribution to understanding the world of the "fine arts" today. Written in a dispassionate tone throughout, it helps to put the Art world into a rational context and shows how the fine art institutions condition us to raise fine art to a near religious level of significance.

No comments about Watercolor Bright and Beautiful.

3 comments about The Complete Book of Basic Brushstrokes for Decorative Painters.

1. I never thought that I'll like another one stoke book after Donna Dewberry's books but this book is really good for beginners and professionals.The first 70 pages shows the basics of one stroke painting. Then there are lots of border examples which can be made easily by the beginners. After them,the real painting comes. 6 beautiful projects are shown step by step so you can understand and make the same projects easily. I recommend this book to everyone.



2. You'll like this book if you are:

   1. Left-brained and over-analytical
   2. Like things written in a technical manner
   3. Prefer simple things broken down in many steps.

   If you like things written in a simple manner, don't buy this book.

   I bought this book and ended up returning it. I found the instructions too technical and tedious. The instructions read more like "the anatomy of a brushstroke," where one brushstroke would be broken down in so many steps that you could get lost. "Angle your brush to the corner, in your minds's eye picture 2 o'clock, at this point put pressure...now curve, lift..." and we have 5 more steps to go. OK, I might be exaggerating but I'm trying to give you the gist of it. There are NO WORKSHEETS, except for 2 pages that look like a ROAD MAP which tell you where your brush should be positioned and where it should end up after you complete the stroke. You really should take a look for yourself to see how confusing this book is.

   There are so many better, simplier, more comprehensive and enjoyable (let's not forget that) decorative painting books out there, that I suggest you bypass this one. I gave it 2 stars because someone who is more technically-oriented might find it useful.




3. This is a wonderful book describing basic brushstrokes for Decorative Painter's. There is a good explanation of brushes and their uses. The techniques are well explained and easy to follow. After practicing for a relatively small period of time, I was painting things that I felt comfortable showing other people. And those people knew what I had painted! Actually, they were quite impressed! The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars is that I have seen some Decorative Painting books that are slightly more thorough although they tend to be more expensive. I would recommend this book to a beginning Decorative Painter.

No comments about Frederic Church's Olana: Architecture and Landscape As Art.

2 comments about Impressionism Beneath the Surface (Perspectives)(Trade Version) (Perspectives).

1. Paul Smith defines Impressionism in terms of the artists' reaction against the "dishonesty" of salon painting and their eagerness to embrace a new way of seeing. Focuses on five approaches: Manet and the artist as flaneur - a new way of looking; Women painters and how women saw themselves as the object of men's gaze; Monet and the exploration of sensation through close attention to light quality; Pissaro's political vision; and Cezanne and the Problem of form.
   
   The introduction is valuable in positioning how these painters saw themselves and what they were attempting to do, in the context of rising bourgeois taste, the scientific investigations of color theory and making themselves relevant to the art world of late 19th century France. They were not isolated but were part of a very active interface of art critics (Baudelaire) researchers (Chevruel) and the public acceptance of their work (Durand-Ruel). A very good overview of five different social influences on the artists.
   
   The early impressionists seem preoccupied with the concept of sensation, maybe because it was the point around which they hung their dissatisfaction with the art world of the time. They talked a great deal about "sensation" in conversations and letters, always didactically but really they were exploring. Eventually Impressionism seems to have run out for most of them but it played a vital role in forming a new vision of what role art played in society, which the public eventually bought into.
   
   Brief bibliography.



2. If we look at IMPRESSIONISM: BENEATH THE SURFACE, we find an art with more going for it than a permanent record of how atmosphere and light change over time. The word comes from Claude Monet's pioneer "Impression, sunrise 1873," where we also find landscapists Eugene Boudin- and Johan Barthold Jongkind-type boldly painted nature from having sketched one's first impression, at one moment in time, on the spot and outside, for strong rivalry to the age-old road to artistic success by meeting carved-in-stone standards based on conservative, classical training, as in Jean-Francois Millet's divinely ordered "Autumn" praising the dignity of labor. It meant painting moments of one's own experience, as in Monet's "Women in the garden," as the way real people really looked through sharply contrasted dark and light under harsh summer sunlight so that the viewer also knew what went into getting the painting done, not as Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre's "Minerva and the three graces," with ideal types under studio light gently going from light into shade and hiding how the painter got the painting to end up looking that way. It also made for a very personal art that was actually not so spur-of-the-moment as it seemed: Monet told American painter Lilla Cabot Perry not to paint the world as events and objects but as patches of color. But what with years of seeing things as things, Impressionists had to change their usual way of looking, which they did by studying both aesthetic and scientific theories and Japanese sources. I particularly like where the author talked about the successes with this retrained way of looking by Paul Cezanne, whose completely different style my sculptress mother loved and my artist sister still does: he painted nature in color patches, with unusual perspective and without lines, so he flattened the background and foreground with a back apple looking quite big in comparison to front apples and tilted the table top in "Still life with plaster." He put nature's organizing color by contrasts and relationships into "Park of the Chateau Noir," with complementary and nearcomplementary side by side. I also like Paul Smith's specific examples from Camillo Pissarro's art: his local colors showed light changing normal hues, as in "Cotes Saint-Denis," with everything touched by the silvery autumnal light made from warm sunlight and sky blue toplight; that same blue toplight colored "The shepherdess," but without sunlight making it through the painting's thick tree growth. In "Young peasant girl drinking coffee," the sitter's face reflected the green from the grass and trees outside her window. The anarchist painter also said that art not coming out of real experiences or looking at the real world was actually escapism. It is easy to see where Impressionist art could be non-escapist what with new ways of interpretation: anthropological, feminist, psychoanalytical, and social-historical ways, of which the book has especially telling examples of how art let on where men and women got to go; public places tended to be for men to look at and paint women, as in Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "La loge." Female Impressionist painters Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot therefore tended to paint homey scenes that sometimes showed women getting ready for the places that were seen as their social space, as in Mary Cassatt's "Girl arranging her hair" and Berthe Morisot's "Yong woman drying herself." But viewers pick up on how aggravating it was to be caught in a routine of set places to go and things to do, as in backgrounds cramping the women in Mary Cassatt's "Five o'clock tea" or Berthe Morisot's "Summer's day" and "View of Paris from the Trocadero." So the book has a fresh look on a beautifully illustrated, logically organized and well written topic: readers might want to go on to Michel Melot's THE IMPRESSIONIST PRINT, Julian Moore's IMPRESSIONIST PARIS, and H Barbara Weinberg et al's AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM AND REALISM.

No comments about Blake, Palmer, Linnell and Co.: The Life of John Linnell.