2 comments about Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand and the American Landscape.

1. I had been hoping for a comprehensive volume on Durand for years. There are almost always 3 or 4 of his works included in most anthologies of American art of the 19th century and certainly any that focus on the Hudson River School. All acknowledge his importance and I have long admired his majestic forestscapes.
   
   This volume is a comprehensive and historical analysis of his life, art and times. It does disappoint to some degree, due to the inclusion of the numerous portrait paintings of his early career. These are skillful but quite dull in comparison to his landscapes. His brief foray into genre is lackluster as well. This results in a book that really only gains it's raison d' etre at the halfway point. Then it is very enjoyable and gives us what we hoped for; good reproductions of his forest scenes and other landscapes. Like Fredrick Church, he brought a new level of realism and scientific study to the landscape, while still imbuing it with the exalted romanticism that connoted a spiritual essence.
   
   I would have liked more focus on his major works, larger plates or more details and less historical context in this book, but it is still the best existing single source on this important artist.



2. President of the National Academy of Design from 1845 until his death in 1886, Asher Durand had a major influence on American painting in its early, formative years. Durand's influence with his paintings and his writings and work with other can been as second only to Thomas Cole, who was at different times both mentor and competitor to Durand in his long career. Though Cole has the higher reputation, Durand went further in defining the genre of nature painting in this early era, including the Hudson River School, and articulating and exploring its principles, sources, and aims in his writings. A series of nine essays Durand wrote in 1855 for the art journal Crayon: A Journal Devoted to the Graphic Arts, and the Literature Related to Them" are reprinted in the appendix.
   
   One hundred color illustrations of Durand paintings along with more than 80 black-and-white pictures testify to Durand's exceptional touch melding realism and idealism in the nature painting of the first generation of American painters after the United States became an independent nation. "Kindred Spirits," the book's title, is taken from a familiar 1849 Durand painting of the writer William Cullen Bryant and painter Thomas Cole standing on a rock ledge overlooking a valley with a stream running down it. Not only are the two men meant to be seen as kindred spirits representing the brotherly-like love in the new nation, but the two men are meant as well to be seen as kindred spirits with the nature world spreading out around them like an ampitheater. An 1855 painting titled "The First Harvest in the Wilderness" pictures a man working in a field of golden corn or wheat with misty mountains rising around him. In the background is a log cabin with a woman working at something by its doorway. No matter what the subject and scene of a Durand painting, it bathes in an Edenic glow implying being chosen as one of Providence's favorites and boundless promise.
   
   Mostly before he came to the nature painting, Durand did prints, engravings, and drawings too. Forty of these are pictured. "Kindred Spirits" is a full, authoritative study of the life, career, art work, and influence of this leading early-1800's American artist concentrating on his nature paintings.

2 comments about An Artist's Way Of Seeing.

1. Excellent book if you want to learn about the unique visual thought process that many artists share. This is not a "how-to paint" book... it is a "how to think" like an artist book- in my opinion. The artwork centers on the author-artist's own work executed in watercolors. I really enjoyed the book... I think that most intermediate painters and creative persons will find some points of inspiration within the book. And if Mrs. Whyte reads this review- your works that feature the older ladies are my favorites.



2. "I like to arrive early in the morning at the pond so that I can watch the lotus flowers open before noon." ~ Mary Whyte
   
   Mary Whyte's art has been exhibited by art galleries and has been collected by museums. She is also the author of Watercolor for the Serious Beginner and has illustrated children's books. I think the reason people love her art is because of the spiritual elements she is able to capture in watercolor. She also adds a magical dimension with color, like she adds blue to the steam from the pan on a stove. The sky burns in a rosy orange as a beautiful woman holds sunflowers.
   
   What I love most about her paintings is the use of blue colors to warm the moments. She also has an expert eye for capturing reflections in water. Her "Moon Over the Meadow" makes you wish you were there, bathed in the blue silvery light.
   
   Mary Whyte's paintings are all beautiful expressions of detailed observation, but where she truly excels is when she paints beautiful women in fields of flowers. They are just stunning.
   
   The beauty of this book is not only the artwork; it is also in the poetic writing and artist comments. Like a diary of experience, Mary Whyte explores landscapes, discusses specific ways she captures moments and is a true teacher in the way she explains how you can create your own watercolor magic. An Artist's Way of Seeing is a true inspiration and rare find!
   
   ~The Rebecca Review

3 comments about Discover Watercolor.

1. This book is a gem in the watercolor teaching books area. It is packed with information and outstanding projects and exercises, and is organized in an excellent easy to follow way with many wonderful illustrations and little boxes to highlight the main points to learn from each lesson.
   
   The book is divided into 3 long chapters. About half of the book is Chapter 3, which is devoted to hands-on painting projects--each unique with something new to teach you in a hands-on approach. Chapter 1 also has smaller painting exercises.
   
   
   Chapter 1 covers TECHNIQUES--
   Each of these techniques sections begins with a boxed area indicating which "key points" will be taught--Example: Painting glass buildings --key points are that "generally, light falling on glass makes it reflective, while shadows make it transparent. Images seen through glass are slightly blurred and reflections distorted, colors seen through glass are paler and bluer than in reality, panes of glass are darkest at the base, paint what you see, working from the general to the particular, etc.. The "Try this!" exercise shows how to "develop a painting of a glass structure by layering wet-in-wet washes, start by capturing the colors and forms reflected in the glass, and contrast these with brighter, more definite surroundings." There is a step-by-step 1-page exercise to show you how it's done. Similarly, the 1-page exercise on making a bird study is just as excellent.
   
   Other topics covered in Chapter 1 include:
   Planning washes, adding details, light fantastic, looking at shadows, painting night scenes, painting skies, painting water, painting reflections, painting seas, painting sparkling water, misty landscapes, painting rain, looking at rainbows, stormy seas, painting snowscapes, trees in summer, trees in winter, painting foliage, painting flowers, painting spring colors, painting autumn colors, painting stone and brick, painting glass buildings, painting birds, painting cats and dogs, painting fur.
   
   Chapter 2 is MIXING COLORS:
   Using blues--exploring blues, mixing blues--2-color mixtures, 3-color mixtures. Cerulean and its mixtures, Ultramarine and it's mixtures,
   Using reds--Exploring reds, mixing reds, alizarin crimson and its mixtures, cadmium red and its mixtures.
   Using yellows, etc.
   Using greens, exploring greens, oxide of chromium and its mixtures, viridian and its mixtures.
   Using violets, exploring violets, mixing violets, permanent mauve and its mixtures.
   Using oranges, etc.
   Using browns, etc.
   Using Black and white--exploring blacks, mixing blacks, Ivory black and its mixtures, Chinese white and its mixtures
   
   Chapter 3---PROJECTS
   Autumn fields, Old mill and stream, Harbor view, Country garden, Rocky coastline,
   Mountain hamlet, Beach at low tide Lakeside scene, Bustling harbor, Sheep in the snow, harbor wall, summer landscape, Grand museum, Coastal town, Leafy garden, Meandering river, Farmyard scene, Lakeside landscape Topiary garden, harbor steps at low tide, The Grand Canal, Indian Market.
   
   I love this book. It is definitely not one of those books where the artist shows off their work and tells you how they did it. Instead it is a teaching book that is packed with about 200 pages of exercises and projects to teach you how it's done by having you follow the well-designed illustrated instructions. It's one of the best teaching books for watercolor that I have in my collection."



2. I really didn't need another book on watercolor painting. Not being a novice but always looking for easier and quicker ways of doing things, I bought this book with some trepidation. But what a pleasant surprise - the book for a change did not waste valuable time/paper on repeat basic instructions but went immediately into techniques. I even found the section on color pigments interesting. Not any one book can give you all you are looking for but this one is nice to have in addition to. Its uncluttered, let's get to it, approach alone deserves 5 stars.



3. As an instructional publication, this book covers an incredible amount of information. The projects depicted are clear in their concept and the step-by-step demonstrations are easy to follow.
   The only withhold that I feel is in the recommendations of certain pigments such as chinese white,lamp black, and cadmiums. I would love to see this book revised using more updated color pigments. The palettes demonstrated are typically British.

3 comments about Watercolor Basics: Light (Watercolor Basics).

1. Unfortunately this wonderful book is OP. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a workshop/demonstration by the author and what a talent and excellent teacher and this title is equally excellent. Well thought out and explained with useful demonstrations. Judy Morris shows you how to see light and shadow. I have purchased other books on the same topic and Judy's tomb tops them all.



2. As a new watercolorist, I have a very serious problem about seeing light and shadow. No matter how my instructor tried to point them out. I hardly see and paint. After reading this book, my eyes are just opened and bring me to a new way of seeing light and shadow. I now understand what to look for and how to improve my rather 'flat' painting.

   The explanation, samples, and instruction in this book are very useful, easy to follow, and practical. I would definitely, highly recommend this book to whom has problem of seeing or understanding nature of LIGHT.




3. I read the book from start to end as soon as I got it in the mail and then again a couple of days later. It was so informative and has some excellent examples of what the author is describing verbally. The exercises are easy to follow and you learn so much from doing the exercises. I am enjoying the book very much and am looking for more from this author. Easy to read and understand but each time that I read it, I discovered more tidbits of knowledge. I probably would not recommend this book to advanced watercolorists but it was just PERFECT for my needs since I only just started the conversion from oil to watercolor.

No comments about Rethinking Acrylic: Radical Solutions For Exploiting The World's Most Versatile Medium.

2 comments about Wildlife Painting Step By Step.

1. This is a beautiful book but not a lot of help if you're learning. It's more for an accomplished artist who would like to fine tune their craft. If I had seen the book before I bought it, I definetly would have saved my money.



2. This is a fabulous instructional book for artists and art lovers alike, specializing in wildlife of all sorts! Lavishly illustrated (both in color and B&W), this book is a rich sourcebook for sketching and or painting a wide variety of wildlife. Consisting of 6 chapters: Choosing a Subject, Collecting Reference Material, Painting Realistic Habitat, Posing and Composing, Techniques for Painting Textures, and Painting Wildlife Step-by-Step, this book contains 136 pgs. Some of the animals featured in this book are foxes, deer, wolves, cougars, wild turkeys, elk, raccoons, chickadees, woodpeckers, robins, grouse, dolphins, whales, and other aquatic life. I love the range of art techniques Patrick Seslar covers in this presentation, making it possible for the artist to "grow" and still benefit from the lessons contained therein.

5 comments about Janet Fish: Paintings.

1. This book is beautiful, amazing and insightful! The art images fill the pages with color and I could look at them for hours. The imformation at the beginning of the book is insightful and helped me to realize what a major American artist Janet Fish is.



2. A beautiful book! Of all my artist books, I believe this is now my favorite.



3. I have been a fan for awhile and was a bit set back by the price.( But then Amazon helps immensely here!) I treated myself. What a treasure this book is! It also contains 4 foldouts that highlight and exemplify her juicy, painterly reflective style of work. Each page is more awesome than the next. A real winner!



4. I finally broke down and bought the one thing I've wanted for years. This painter is my particular favorite in realism in current artists. Every hint I dropped to everyone did not get it here, so of course ordering myself worked. I now can see the plates.And the dishes.
   
   This is a book of the paintings of Janet Fish. Do you know her? Beautiful reproductions of her work are found here with that excellent color. Well-done book. She is the master of small intimate scenes of objects, still-life paintings in her hands become grand scale. They are thing portraits, really of highly personal and evocative objects. They hold a mastery of space, time, life composition( these things are connected to her relationship to the world, people/events/memories represented by them), and ultimately are about light. She has been a favorite of mine since 1975 when I first came to know of her work. And saw her. I have painted tied to still life and observations of "small intimate things in a life".I strive to maintain a colloquial, personal "voice" that hints at the rural, an American construct for me, the power in a specific context of ordinariness, the honoring of a simple life. I've been forever hung up in several painters that seem able to take some "things" and imbue them with the "self", different than words, different than say a short story, but just the same insightfulness about the artist in their choices, their moment in time. Yes I finally got to my point. Moment in time. With Fish I always feel a freeze in the one thing we know can never freeze, time. So I've written and worked in similar fashion, and her work was a kind of visual inspiration and teacher. But I saw very few of the great oeuvre of works up until this volume. Precious few pictures I had, that spoke so clearly I returned to them over and over.
   
   Fish is the master of these wonderful, color intensified, light charged, dancing, and hope filled positive pictures. Glassware, her objects speak thing to thing within the paintings. The paintings seem composed to reach out and grab you and like dancing reflections bounce you around the interior spaces. I'm always utterly captivated by her work. Held. Suspended, delighted and in love with the rich color. I'm inclined to emotion, feeling, sensual delight and these paintings are just places I want to remain luxuriating within as if in a fantasy. I have not really seen the entire book yet, though it's three days in my hands. I stop and look and fall into several pictures and put it down to just shake my head at her ability and training. The mark is painterly for me; she was never photo-real to me.Though she can be grouped there. But she was a realist of a sort. It is expressionistic work, it even evokes Bonnard (who I might add completely causes me to lose my reality for the pleasure of his vision) and I'm lost in one work not ready yet to go on to another.Sensualist that i tend to be. If I were seeing them full scale it would be an ultimate experience.
   I read there is an exhibit in New York for a month going on now and I'm hopeful my daughter's college looking will take me there during this time as she goes to her interviews.Did I mention her Merit Finalist status? It may be wishful on my part, but I'd like to see current Fish works.I've seen so few in person where the scale astounds me. From what I see on-line they are growing more elaborated, fragmented, rich with movement. Almost baroque. But who knows, I need to go look.
   I thought of Fish, Chuck Close and Phillip Pearlstein (genius painters/teachers) as the three artists of my college days that spoke to me in work about image making and to finally, finally own this book is really remarkable. It arrived damaged in mid book but I can't return it as I don't want to give it up. Silly but it's true.
   
   Fish is such an accomplished American woman artist. I'd recommend this book to anyone in a heartbeat. I wish I'd gotten it for myself earlier but it was a very nice Valentines treat for just myself, as her work inspires and is such a significant body of art to watch evolve through the pages. So now, for me, she will be associated with Valentines and my acting on a little self-love.(cringe at wording) One day I'll read the text. It'll be terrific, but for now I'm content to bask in the light of her paintings as it reflects through all the pieces of glassware. Utterly beautiful and an illumination of fiery light falling gems. I'm really in a kind of almost heaven.



5. A true treasure of a book; the author's text is informative, cogent, and connective; connecting Fish to other artists of her time and before her time. I had not been a true Fish fan before I read this book, because sometimes my (bad) eyes cannot take in all that she can squeeze into one painting. The information gleaned from reading the text and looking at the reproductions being talked about has widened my appreciation of her, and also awakened me more to the influences of the Abstract Expressionists and other non-objective painters of the Fifties by showing me how much their emphasis on design permeates her very realistic work. Once again, I see that design (composition) rules, whether the work is realistic or abstract or totally non-objective.
   
   If you want to take in art history painlessly, want to grow as a painter yourself, read and study and absorb this book.

1 comments about Painting Fabulous Floorcloths.

1. I found this book very informative. Being new to making floorcloths it gave me all the information I needed. It didn't just skim over the subject but dealt with it in depth.

2 comments about Van Gogh: Colour Library (Phaidon Colour Library).

1. A beautiful book!!! A must have for those who are fascinated with Vincent Van Gogh!



2. I have been looking for a book on Mr. Van Gogh for quite some time that successfully conveys the texture and vivid color that he uses. This book gave me everything that i had been looking for. The "colour library" series that it is a part of is filled with other volumes that depict paintings by various artists in the glory that they were meant to, stopping just short of the vividness of seeing the actual painting in a museum. Not only are they wonderfully done, but they are a steal at the low price they are selling for. While most art books out there cost you an arm and a leg, these volumes give you pure beauty at a very low price.

2 comments about New Techniques in Egg Tempera.

1. This book provides an excellent alternative method of using egg tempera to the traditional methods detailed in Daniel Thompson's book. The author shows that egg tempera is a lot more flexible medium than many people believe. Mr Vickrey attempts to show how some of the myths about egg tempera are self limiting. Vickrey's paintings themeselves have at times the air of whimsical magical realism tinged with a nostalgia for lost childhood days. They may or may not be your cup of tea, but if you are interested in Tempera painters and the techniques and materials required to paint this way then I highly recommend this book.



2. I found this painter sometime in the 1970's where Purdue University gave him a show. Fascinated by his "clown" picture I soon found a large print of his "Parakeet" and not being able to afford the price of that print, I did it anyway.
   
   Vickrey is simply a classic American Artist. A major artist of that century.
   
   Glad he's still living and hoping to see more of his work in a new book.