Art Books, Magazines, and DVDs for Painting Techniques
We've compiled a list of our favorite books for Painting Techniques.
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Brilliant Color: Painting Vibrant Outdoor Scenes
Author Julie Gilbert Pollard provides 10 step-by-step demonstrations that teach you how to paint bold colorful landscapes in oil. Her detailed instructions and color charts will awaken your sense of color and help you to achieve more luminous paintings.
Classic Portrait Painting in Oils: Keys to Mastering Diverse Skin Tones
Easy-to-follow techniques for seeing and recording accurate colors as well as tips for posing and lighting your subjects with artificial and natural light sources.
Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light & Color
An invaluable guide from one of the nation's leading plein air artists. Whether you're interested in still lifes or landscape subjects, Kevin Macpherson's book teaches you how to see color, light and shadow and how to simply shapes for a stronger painting.
The Dance of Watercolor: Beginners and Beyond (DVD)
Nothing beats being able to actually watch a demonstration to truly grasp and understand the concepts of working with watercolor.
The Painterly Approach: An Artist's Guide To Seeing, Painting And Expressing
Bob Rohm, a popular workshop instructor, teaches techniques for improving your paintings and giving them greater expression. By focusing on shapes and values, rather than line, readers are taught to identify abstract patterns and evaluate their relationships in order to achieve a more painterly outcome.
The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists
This book covers everything you should have learned in art school, but perhaps didn't. Kathleen guides you through color mixing, creating the illusion of form, brush techniques, and the logical steps one should take when creating a still life, landscape, or portrait painting.
Charles Reid's Watercolor Solutions: Learn To Solve The Most Common Painting Problems
Charles Reid has a unique and delightful style that shows off watercolor at its best. He covers all the basic techniques and provides thoughtful instruction for figurative and landscape subjects, but most of all he inspires us with his beautifully unfettered paintings!
A Celebration of Light
Create watercolor paintings with a strong visual impact. Learn to set up better compositions, use a full range of values, bring out more color in your work, play up textures, and paint effective backgrounds. Jane includes instructions on how to paint reflections, glass, lace and beautiful light patterns.
Janet Whittle's Watercolour Flowers: An Inspirational Step-by-step Guide to Colour and Techniques
Demonstrations for painting a wide variety of flowers and helpful tips for choosing the right combination of flowers. You'll learn to create dazzling lighting effects, glowing colors, soft and hard edges, beautiful translucence, and effective backgrounds.
Mastering Composition: Techniques and Principles to Dramatically Improve Your Painting
This book and instructional DVD provides step-by-step demonstrations that teach you composition and design theory. Use the basic principles of design to create more effective works of art with harmony and movement.
Paint Watercolors that Dance with Light
Gorgeous sun-drenched images that will make you want to pick up a brush. Artist and instructor, Elizabeth Kincaid, teaches you how to capture that elusive play of light that will make your watercolor paintings come alive with glowing beauty.
Landscape Painting Inside and Out: Capture the Vitality of Outdoor Painting in Your Studio With Oils
Kevin MacPherson is a well-respected artist and past President of the Plein Air Painters of America. In this book, he shares what he has learned from his many years of experience as a plein air painter. His advice is practical and thorough.
Watercolor in Motion: How to Create Powerful Paintings, Step by Step (Book & DVD)
Demonstrations help you learn different techniques such as wet on wet, and soft and hard edges and the best way to blend colors.
Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits: More than 500 Color Combinations for skin, eyes, lips & hair
Who hasn't struggled with getting the right skin tones in a portrait painting? Powell simplifies the process by giving you a sort of "cheat sheet" to work with for a variety of skin colors, including recipes for hair, eye, and lip colors.
Color Choices
Learn to use color in striking and unusual ways. Quiller explains the how and why of color theories and provides inspiration with his own colorful works of art.
Oil Painting Techniques and Materials
Discusses important elements in drawing and painting (tone, form, and value) and other issues such as composition, color, and design.
See also:
Art Courses: Oil Painting Classes & Workshops
Art Courses: Watercolor Painting
Art Courses: Acrylic Painting
Painting Resources
More Art Books