Some Useful Books for Painters:
These are some of my favorite books, with links to find them on Amazon
The first two are by Al Gury:
The first two are by Al Gury:
This next book, by Mitchell Albala, has a particularly good section on getting organized for Plein Air painting. I really love his paintings too--almost abstract with gorgeous color and texture.
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Allla Prima: Everything I know about Painting by Richard Schmid
This book is very pricey, because it’s self published, I suspect. But it’s wonderfully opinionated and helpful, with tons of photographs and specific advice both technical and artistic, from a great teacher.
https://www.amazon.com/Alla-Prima-Everything-About-Painting/dp/0966211715
Virgil Elliott's, Traditional Oil Painting, is a wonderful book that details advanced techniques from the Renaissance through the present. His chapter on the relative transparency/opacity of different paints is very useful. He also goes into great detail on the various classical painting approaches, with illustrations of each by master artists.
This book is very pricey, because it’s self published, I suspect. But it’s wonderfully opinionated and helpful, with tons of photographs and specific advice both technical and artistic, from a great teacher.
https://www.amazon.com/Alla-Prima-Everything-About-Painting/dp/0966211715
Virgil Elliott's, Traditional Oil Painting, is a wonderful book that details advanced techniques from the Renaissance through the present. His chapter on the relative transparency/opacity of different paints is very useful. He also goes into great detail on the various classical painting approaches, with illustrations of each by master artists.
Now for another way to visualize the world, I recommend Daniel Giordan's well-organized tutorial on Photoshop. Giordan reveals, step-by-step, how he conceptualized and created his own breathtaking images. The book is organized in a logical way, teaching those Photoshop tools most necessary to learn first. Because, let's face it, Photoshop can be pretty intimidating. There's at least three ways to do anything with it, and more new stuff added with each upgrade to the software. Giordan assumes some photography skills, but his clear descriptions make this book useful to anyone who has a bit of ambition to learn the program.