Book Description

Easy-to-follow guide, enhanced with 122 illustrations (including 60 in full color), tells novices how to use washes, drybrush and wet-in-wet techniques to paint mountains, rocks and mist, as well as how to apply color when painting the sky, trees, and terrain. Also contains seven expert step-by-step demonstrations for rendering deciduous and evergreen trees, hills, a lake, snow and ice, clouds, and a sunset. An indispensable practical manual for beginners that also offers inspiration and a helpfulreview for experienced artists.
... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great book
Just got this book today. I'm starting in painting with watercolors and this is a great guide if your just getting started. It shows step by step techniques and complete pictures of landscape watercolors, great for beginner or intermediate. ... Read more

Book Description

Gilbert Munger (1837-1903) achieved enormous artistic success by depicting recently discovered western landscapes with an accuracy and style admired by both scientists and art connoisseurs. By the 1870s his talent and keen eye had carried him to top of the New York and San Francisco art markets. But his decline was equally dramatic; when he died at age 65, he was an almost forgotten man.

This landmark study reestablishes the artist’s place in the history of American landscape painting. His early works are painted in the realistic style of the Hudson River School, while his later pictures are suffused with the atmosphere and color of J. M. W. Turner, or the rural repose and historic air of Barbizon. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A gorgeous full-color reproductions of Munger's artworks
Michael D. Schroeder (the creator of www.gilbertmunger.org - a website presenting the catalogue raisonne of Gilbert Munger's more than 200 known works and documentation of the painter's life and art) and J. Gray Sweeney (Professor of Art History, Arizona State University) combine their considerable insights and expertise in Gilbert Munger: Quest For Distinction, an artbook that presents the works and explorations of nineteenth-century American visionary Gilbert Munger (1837-1903). It was Munger's travels which led him to represent the American West with a keen eye for accuracy combined with a dash of inspirational wonder. A very highly recommended addition to personal and academic Art History collections, the gorgeous full-color reproductions of Munger's artworks and informative and detailed text make Gilbert Munger: Quest For Distinction an inherently fascinating and informatively revealing search for the depth and meaning behind lasting works of Gilbert Munger's panoramic art. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A gentle, skillfull guide to painting watercolors in nature.
It is apparent from the first chaper of this book that Ms. Campbell is as skillfull a teacher as a painter. She gives the novice and more experienced painter a tremendous amount of information in the simplest and mostengaging way; covering paper, paints, tools and little aids that can make adifference in the field.She also touches on specific aspects of nature,such as trees, rocks and yes, even simple ways to include the human figurein your work. I am painter, and of all the books on painting out of doorsin watercolor, this is the most encouraging.Practical instructions oncolor and tools as well as a readily made kit that is lightweight andeffective, are complemented by excellent guidance. I picked up great tipsthat are easily applied to the task at hand, such as the clever use of ablank credit card.There is also the language of a patient teacher whoexplains after giving an example that, "this takes lots of practice. Don't get frustrated", and you won't with this wonderful guide. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

a great book for the beginner or beyond!
This book helps de-mystify oil painting; making it so less complicated to choose colors and brushes. The projects help an artist to learn skills and master this medium. The book even covers a simple way to do plein aire painting. I love it! ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

Ike Taiga - a central figure in the history of Japanese art
Ms Takeuchi has presented an excellent appraisal of the life and work of Taiga.After a detailed biographical section, the artist is considered in relation to his contemporaries and to developing theories about the relationship between landscape and pictorial representation.Particular attention is paid to the theories of Gyokushu, who assigned Taiga a central position in the new Nanga movement in Japanese art.Finally, the meanings of the concept "shinkeizu", or "true-view", as applied to Taiga's work, are helpfully clarified.

Taiga is shown to occupy a pivotal position, reinterpreting Chinese traditions of landscape painting to give new impetus to topographical art during the Tokugawa period.His genius is shown to reside in his simultaneous innovation, and respect for tradition.

This book is generously illustrated in colour and monochrome, and benefits from some very helpful appendices, including a section on the personal seals used by Taiga on his pictures. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

a good basic book on these two genres
Has good help for a shorter book, but many newer, readily available books have much more info. I recommend getting a specific book on each of the subjects. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A difficult subject made approacable
In this day of abstract and cerebral art it is often difficult to garner the skills needed to paint watercolors of natures' most challenging subject matter:water and snow. Jack Rieds' book is a wonderful introduction to this otherwise daunting subject. Every thing a beginner needs to know about painting snow and several different forms of water is covered in this volume of the Watercolor Basics series; from materials to application. The illustrations are lovely and not unduly difficult; yet capture the fundamentals of the subject matter beautifully. If you want to paint the winter snows, spring thaws and summers at the beach, this is the book for you, particularly beginners. ... Read more

Book Description

In this richly illustrated volume, including a number of stunning color prints, Barbara Novak explains that for fifty extraordinary years, American society bestowed in the idea of Nature its most cherished ideals. Between 1825 and 1875 all kinds of Americans--artists, writers, scientists, as well as everyday citizens--believed that God in Nature could resolve human contradictions, and that nature itself confirmed the American destiny. During these years Nature, God, and Man converged to become a trinity, and it was through the landscape painters, the leaders of this intellectual movement, that the nation was reminded of divine benevolence "by keeping before their eyes the mountains, trees, forests, and lakes." Using diaries and letters of the artists as well as quotes from literary texts, journals, and periodicals, Novak illuminates the range of ideas projected on to the American landscape by painters such as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Martin J. Heade, and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, Theodore Rousseau, and Frederich Wilhelm Schelling.

Adding a rich new dimension to the discussion of nature's influence on the American mind, Novak explains how religion, philosophy, science, and literatrue served as the support system for the idea of God in Nature. She shows that the idea of nature as a national vested interest was invaluable to a young expanding nation, but ultimately this essentially monolithic view collapsed from within, undermined by the Civil War, Darwinism, and a burgeoning technological landscape. Taking American landscape painting in its golden era as a product of society, she examines the cultural background of paintings as an index to their intrinsic meaning. She explains, for example, how new discoveries in science were made consonant with Deity, how religion itself permeated nature with the idea of Creation, and how the landscape artists were given the task of providing the images of nature that became the national iconography. Novak goes on to demonstrate how American landscapists, handling rocks, clouds, plants, and other natural elements, paralleled and diverged from scientific developments, and also how the landscapists who accompanied explorers on their westward expeditions related to their scientific colleagues.

Now with a new introduction, this incisive volume encompasses a vast cultural panorama. It beautifully demonstrates how the influence of the nature served, not only as a vehicle for artistic creation, but as its ideal form. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Beyond the Purely Visual to Avoid Stalled Artistic Thinking
Nature and Culture is one of those breakthrough books that makes you wonder how a field could possibly have missed the obvious for so long.Ms. Novak looks at American landscape painting from 1825-1875 from theperspective of what those landscapes meant to contemporaries, by drawing onnonpainting sources.

This is a critical step forward because landscapepainting for this group had a theological and philosphical context that isremote to us in these post-Darwinian days.The intent of the artists andthe perceptions of the first viewers are in many ways as remote from us inthe 21st century as the cave dwellers in Lescaux.

I found this work tobe exceptionally well balanced and provocative.I will never again besatisfied to understand a work only from my own perspective and time.Ms.Novak has opened up a whole new world for me that I should have been ableto open for myself, as someone trained as a social historian.I humblythank her for helping me extend my understanding of art beyond where itwould otherwise have gone.

Well done!Enjoy! ... Read more

Book Description

An artist's monograph of oil paintings, watercolors and pen and ink drawings inspired by the rugged beauty of California's North Coast. The Book is perfect bound with full color reproduction on the front cover.It has 56pages with 42 color plates and 9 black and white halftones. Three of the plates are full page, the rest are 5x7 inches.Printed on premium coated 100# text and 100# cover stock.An introduction by the artist traces his development and describes his process and influences. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A Deep Inner Sea
For those who love the sea and for whom the sea brings out their deepest thoughts and phantoms, these paintings are visual poetry. A meditation and inspiration! The artist's fascinating commentary gives an intimate look into his unusual painting process. ... Read more