Painting on Location


Book Description

"The advantage of painting outside is simply that you are there, 'living' the subject." --David Curtis For celebrated British painter David Curtis, painting on location is the most rewarding and enjoyable way of working. Here, he leads you on a passionate plein air adventure, showing you how to seize the moment, focus on the essential elements of a subject, and capture the mood with speed and economy. As atmospheric as the subject itself, Painting On Location is replete with anecdotes and gorgeous artwork. It's like sitting next to David as he works the canvas, discussing key lessons on: Working in partnership with oils and watercolors, taking advantage of each medium's special characteristics to make the most of your fresh air sessions. What to pack: having just the right equipment with you to work efficiently and effectively. Coping with the challenges of fleeting light and inclement weather. Finding a worthy subject and a personal viewpoint. Techniques for translating your subject in a quick and lively way. Maintaining a sense of place back in the studio as you finish your plein air pieces or use them as inspiration for new works. Painting on location creates another dimension to your work, allowing you to capture not only the look of your subject, but the very feel of it. David leads you to the confidence and inspiration you need to head out, brush in hand, to experience the rush and rewards of plein air painting.




Painting on Location


Book Description

David Curtis is one of the most successful and celebrated artists working in the UK today. His books are bestsellers and in his latest book he discusses and demonstrates his approach to painting outside on location. He paints on site whenever possible as he finds that working directly from the subject gives his work a sense of immediacy, dynamism, light and drama. Many artists are interested in painting outside but lack the confidence to successfully work in this way. Here David shows how to develop the necessary skills. He looks at every aspect, from preliminary planning to appropriate painting techniques and, above all, how to capture the essence of the scene in front of you. He includes location sketching as well as advice on essential equipment to take with you. With practical advice and inspirational paintings covering a wide variety of subjects, Painting on Location will prove valuable to all those who wish to paint outdoors, whether to make finished paintings in their own right on location, or to use the experience and information gathered as a basis for further work in the studio.




Painting Watercolors on Location with Tom Hill


Book Description

Artists will learn how to paint great watercolors by watching as Tom Hill transforms everyday scenes into exciting watercolor compositions. Filled with Hill's luscious paintings, this guide will inspire as well as instruct.




The Urban Sketching Handbook Understanding Light


Book Description

The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Lighthelps urban sketchers develop the skills they need to capture and express different kinds of light, both natural and artificial, in both day and night scenes.




Landscape Painting


Book Description

Because nature is so expansive and complex, so varied in its range of light, landscape painters often have to look further and more deeply to find form and structure, value patterns, and an organized arrangement of shapes. In Landscape Painting, Mitchell Albala shares his concepts and practices for translating nature's grandeur, complexity, and color dynamics into convincing representations of space and light. Concise, practical, and inspirational, Landscape Painting focuses on the greatest challenges for the landscape artist, such as: • Simplification and Massing: Learn to reduce nature's complexity by looking beneath the surface of a subject to discover the form's basic masses and shapes.• Color and Light: Explore color theory as it specifically applies to the landscape, and learn the various strategies painters use to capture the illusion of natural light.• Selection and Composition: Learn to select wisely from nature's vast panorama. Albala shows you the essential cues to look for and how to find the most promising subject from a world of possibilities. The lessons in Landscape Painting—based on observation rather than imitation and applicable to both plein air and studio practice—are accompanied by painting examples, demonstrations, photographs, and diagrams. Illustrations draw from the work of more than 40 contemporary artists and such masters of landscape painting as John Constable, Sanford Gifford, and Claude Monet. Based on Albala's 25 years of experience and the proven methods taught at his successful plein air workshops, this in-depth guide to all aspects of landscape painting is a must-have for anyone getting started in the genre, as well as more experienced practitioners who want to hone their skills or learn new perspectives.




Drawing and Painting on Location


Book Description

Working en plein-air is a French term that means literally 'in the open air' and, although artists have been doing just that for centuries, the concept is experiencing a resurgence today. Sketchers and painters alike are leaving their studios and heading out into the open air. This book encourages you to join them. Full of in-depth advice and practical instruction, it explains how to make the most of painting outside and how to capture the very essence of a scene with a far greater authenticity than can be achieved when working from a second-hand image. It covers an array of mediums including pencils, pastels, pens, watercolours, oils and acrylics and advises on the best materials and accessories, from sketchbooks to easels. Also suggests suitable locations and subject matter including landscapes, seascapes and people, explaining the importance of good composition, colour harmony, tonal values and perspective. It further encourages the exploration of new ideas by examining other artists' work, and the development of personal style. Beautifully illustrated with 213 colour images.




On Painting


Book Description

Alberti’s Della Pittura was the first modern analytical study of painting, a pioneering treatise on the theory of art. A systematic description of the one-point perspective construction, it was primarily designed to persuade both patron and painter in the Renaissance to discard the old tastes in painting for the new. John R. Spencer's translation of Della Pittura is based on all the known manuscripts and is edited with an Introduction and Notes.




Color as Field


Book Description

Color field painting, which emerged in the United States in the 1950s, is based on radiant, uninflected hues. Exemplified by the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, and Frank Stella, among others, these stunningly beautiful and impressively scaled paintings constitute one of the crowning achievements of postwar American abstract art. Color as Field offers a long-overdue reevaluation of this important aspect of American abstract painting. The authors examine how color field painting rejects the gestural, layered, and hyper-emotional approach typical of Willem de Kooning and his followers, yet at the same time develops and expands ideas about all-overness and the primacy of color posited by the work of other members of the abstract expressionist generation, such as Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. From the fresh historical standpoint of the 21st century, this fascinating reassessment ranges across the artists’ individual approaches and their commonalities, concluding with insights into the ongoing legacy of post-1970s color field painting among present-day artists.




Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air Painting


Book Description

"How did modern Chinese painters see landscape? Did they depict nature in the same way as premodern Chinese painters? What does the artistic perception of modern Chinese painters reveal about the relationship between artists and the nation-state? Could an understanding of modern Chinese landscape painting tell us something previously unknown about art, political change, and the epistemological and sensory regime of twentieth-century China? Yi Gu tackles these questions by focusing on the rise of open-air painting in modern China. Chinese artists almost never painted outdoors until the late 1910s, when the New Culture Movement prompted them to embrace direct observation, linear perspective, and a conception of vision based on Cartesian optics. The new landscape practice brought with it unprecedented emphasis on perception and redefined artistic expertise. Central to the pursuit of open-air painting from the late 1910s right through to the early 1960s was a reinvigorated and ever-growing urgency to see suitably as a Chinese and to see the Chinese homeland correctly. Examining this long-overlooked ocular turn, Gu not only provides an innovative perspective from which to reflect on complicated interactions of the global and local in China, but also calls for rethinking the nature of visual modernity there."




Painting Watercolors on Location


Book Description

An intensive workshop approach presented by a master watercolorist, this guide presents 11 step-by-step demonstrations filled with invaluable methods and techniques that result in exciting and expressive on-site watercolor compositions.