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Traditional Oil Painting
Advanced Techniques and Concepts from the Renaissance to the Present

by Virgil Elliott



     

Artist's Lesson Book Is Eye Treat

Traditional Oil Painting, published by Watson-Guptill, is a how-to book suitable for your coffee table. The publishers call it "every working artist's guide to this classic art form."

But to think of it only in this way misses something, for it isn't a traditional do-it-yourself kind of book from which one can learn craft. For that you can get glossy little manuals at your local art supply or university book store. Not that it won't help a would-be painter or even a painter with some expertise gain a certain perspective that may improve their skills. It will. But this how-to book will also be an inspiration to those who love art; it just goes about it differently by combining exceptional content with the quality of those lovely volumes for reproductions owned by the museum crowd.

Author Virgil Elliott goes about this by giving a reader (artist or appreciator of art) an understanding of the underlying skill set used to produce a great masterpiece. Chapters include Aesthetic Considerations, which includes subsections on Variety, Linear Elements, the Golden Mean and Composition. One chapter is called Color. Another is titled The Importance of Drawing, and yes, this is a book on painting.

It also turns out that Traditional Oil Painting isn't all that traditional. It includes extensive information on the latest scientific discoveries that contribute to the art (and appreciation) of painting. That's something painters who have been at it awhile won't want to miss.

Speaking of color. Oh, the color plates! A portrait by Alfred Stevens, a still-life by William Michael Harnett. The light and shadow of George de la Tour and Johannes (Jan) Vermeer of Delft. Even a self-portrait of the author, Virgil Elliott. Paintings many of us are not likely to see in life, or even in books. Paintings from the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

This, then, is the perfect gift for anyone with a head or heart for art.

The Book

Watson-Guptill Publications
August 2007
Hardcover
9780823030668
How to / Painting
More at Amazon.com
Excerpt
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The Reviewer

Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Reviewed 2007
NOTE: Reviewer Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the award-winning author of This is the Place, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, and a chapbook of poetry titled Tracings, winner of the Military Writers Society of America's Award of Excellence and named Top Ten Best Reads by the Compulsive Reader. She is also the author of the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books including The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success and The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't, the 2004 winner of USA Book News' Best Professional Book of the Year and Irwin awards.
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