Book Description
Offers down-to-earth advice on painting gorgeous outdoors scenes through 10 step-by-step demos Teaches painters how to master the art of observation Shows readers how to translate field notes and sketches into fully realized studio paintings The overwhelming beauty of the outdoors is one of the most inspiring - and elusive - subjects for painters. With Landscape Painting Inside and Out, Kevin Macphearson first shows readers how to see like an artist, then teaches them how to recreate their vision into stunningly realistic outdoors scenes. His insightful process encourages readers to focus on the small details to achieve big results.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent examples.......2007-09-19
This book gives practical, specific advice on improving your landscape painting technique. I especially like the illustrations. The paintings are beautiful and "fresh." Not your average landscapes. They inspired me.
shadows.......2007-09-10
Great book Good information but Kevin seems to lose his separation of the lights and shadows in some of his demos in the back of the book He talks about it but then shadows start getting to light in value and too much detail. This could be from the reproductions of his painting
Not as much "color and light" in this one........2007-08-11
Having read this author's previous book on putting color and light in your paintings, I was a little disappointed with this one---I expected more. The book was well organized, (had, once again, pages of stuff about selecting your brushes, etc.); the author set forth his view of a limited palette, and said that you needed to be excited about your painting---but I don't believe that he was excited when he wrote this. If he was, he didn't convey it well. Had a number of exercises, some reasonable, others only for the wealthy (use an entire tube of cadmium red light on your painting (That is, really thick!)
Anyway, having read through the book, I would not buy this book again --- that's the bottom line.
Wonderful instruction for the Plein-Air artist........2007-06-27
Kevin Macpherson gives thorough instructions in his book from colors used to composition. A beautiful book with many demonstrations. I would highly recommend to the beginning or advanced Plein-Air painter in oil.
A "Must Have" Resource.......2007-05-23
If you are an oil painter or even if you are a want-to-be painter, Kevin MacPherson's book is a terrific reference. Personally, I'm a Plein Air painter and Kevin is a master at painting on location. He covers what supplies you'll need and techniques in painting. I've had this book for some time and still refer to it often.
Book Description
This is simply the best and most complete course in botanical illustration ever produced, with each chapter a perfectly constructed and self-contained class. Created in conjunction with the internationally renowned Eden Project—home of the only jungle in captivity—it’s put together by two leading figures in the Project’s famed art school, and uses many beautiful works from its students. Artists and plant lovers will find a wealth of practical information, with easy-to-follow exercises and case studies. The priceless advice encompasses everything from honing observational skills and plant dissection procedures to color mixing and applying watercolor. Adding highlights, producing a pleasing composition, and developing a personal style—all the building blocks for achieving excellence are here.
Customer Reviews:
Botanical illustration.......2007-05-12
This is an in depth clear book about the process of botanical illustration. Well written and great pictures. Recommend highly!
Customer Reviews:
Botanical Painting.......2006-11-10
It is a nice book and the explain it good the art of flowers. I recommanded on every the draw with flowers.
Absolutely the best.......2006-04-08
I've bought all sorts of books on botanical painting but this is the best of the best. The illustrations are fabulous, the instructions clear and comprehensive. Have you ever heard of "botanical gray"? This book is something you can't live without.
Possibly the best available book on Botanical Painting.......2004-12-31
What a fabulous book!
If you paint flowers in watercolour or are enrolled on a course of Botanical Illustration, as I am, then this is the book for you.
Written by Margaret Stevens in association with the Society of Botanical Artists, the book takes the reader briefly through the beginnings of Botanical Art to a useful chapter on materials including paper, watercolours and brushes. Whilst it doesn't proscribe a palette of colours, the great majority of the illustrations detail the colours used. The chapter on plant anatomy is useful for the non-botanist as is the one on drawing technique for those new to this aspect of painting.
What gives this book a considerable edge over others of this type is that its other purpose is as the text book for a two-year diploma course in Botanical Illustration run by the SBA. (The author is the course director.) There are up to a dozen examples of work covered from start to finish over several pages produced by members of the SBA, some of whom are tutors on the course. There is excellent detail of watercolour technique and superb coverage of the production of varied coloured leaves and flowers and the colours used in their painting. The chapters on composition, working in the field and painting fruit and vegetables are extremely useful. All chapters are illustrated by high quality botanical paintings, mostly by SBA members.
A beautiful book to own, better as an inspiration to painting but best of all as a reference when painting flowers in watercolours.
Book Description
Since Antiquity, painters have sought to portray the glories of nature, and many of their pictures have become the best-known masterpieces in the history of art. In this sweeping treasury of Western art, distinguished art historian Nils Büttner has chosen paintings that not only portray natural vistas but also dramatic scenes with people and architecture. His broad selection of paintings in this genre consists mainly of well-known works, but some seldom-reproduced pictures are also included. The paintings are presented chronologically, beginning with the heritage from the ancient world and the precursors of landscape artists in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Bellini, and Raphael. The sixteenth century heralded a new perception of the world, reflected in the works of such masters as Albrecht Dürer and Bruegel, as shown. Next, artists of the flowering age of landscapes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are featured, including Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, Fragaonard, David, and Gainsborough. In the early nineteenth century, which was dominated by the spirit of Romanticism, artists began to display a new manner of treating nature. These revolutionary conceptions of nature are vividly presented with examples from Constable, Turner, Whistler, Frederic Church, Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer. These artists are followed by plein-air painters, Impressionists, and Post-Impressionists, among them Manet, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, van Gogh, and Rousseau. Artists represented from the twentieth century include Matisse, Picasso, Klee, Magritte, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, and David Hockney. Many of the extraordinary works are reproduced in full along with a detail and an informative caption.
In the authoritative text, the author traces the history of landscape painting up to the present day but also focuses on individual paintings and the circumstances under which they were created. Along with a description of a painting, the lucid text examines the work's cultural, historical, and aesthetic context.
The art of landscape artists, which has long been an under-published area of art history, is finally and stunningly revealed in this richly illustrated tribute to their work. This fresh vision of landscape artists is certain to be welcomed by art historians and museum-goers, as well anyone else interested in Western art.
Book Description
This inspiring guide provides artists with the knowledge they need to paint watercolor landscapes. It features easy-to-follow exercises illustrated in an accessible format that invites readers to jump in and begin painting right away. Artists of all skill levels will learn from:
-30 step-by-step demonstrations
-Chapters that focus on basic landscape elements, such as land, water and sky
-Special mini demos for capturing important details, including trees, mountains, waves, clouds, sunsets and more.
Most importantly, this guide's instruction teaches artists the foundations of strong composition and encourages them to pursue their own individual style to create landscapes that are compelling and unique.
Customer Reviews:
Nice book to buy but .......2007-08-23
Its a nice book but if you already have the other book from Gordon Mackenzie, I wouldn't recommend it. Basically half the book almost has the same things.
If you don't have any book from him.... its a nice buy. you will enjoy reading it.
Fine book to learn from, if you will practice........2007-08-09
I bought the "Watercolorist's Essential Notebook"(WEN) and this "WEN - Landscapes," fearing they would be the same with a few different illustrations. (I was specifically looking for ideas on mountains). I was surprised that the first 20 pages contained the same material, but presented with landscapes theme. The rest of the book had many ideas and suggestions, not just rehashed WEN. There was enough new material to warrant this purchase. I should keep trying the presented techniques, but there was enough to satisfy my desire. For less than the cost of a lesson (I consider shipping/handling the same as using my vehicle to drive to the lesson) I have hours of experimenting ahead of me. The illustrations of the effects of each technique are very good, and the "step by step" illustrations aren't cookie cutter recipes, but suggestions for your own experiments. As a "new watercolorist" (meaning I haven't sold anything yet, but I am at the point of feeling I now could), I was surprised at how well I took to, and how much I learned from, both WEN books. I would say suitable from the start for beginners, and advanced students to working.
Beginner or advanced, if you paint you NEED this book!.......2007-07-13
I was so pleased with this book that I bought the author's previous one, "The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook" and was just as happy with it! I learned so much from this book, and still continue to learn from it. I consider myself a beginner as I have only been studying watercolor for less than a year, but I took it to class and showed it to my instructor. She was so impressed by it that she bought it to use in her classes. Even with an MFA, she found information that was new to her. The author has a wonderful, playful style that makes learning exciting and fun. Whatever your skill level, you owe it to yourself to own this book!
Excellent for beginners and all.......2007-07-12
Mr. MacKenzie shows techniques which all can utilize. I have been doing watercolor paintings for about two and half years with some success. I find his suggestions a great help. He is precise and forthright in his endeavor to share his artistic techniques with each reader. It's a great book.
The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook: Landscapes.......2007-05-09
Excellent review of ways to do landscapes. Good techniques and interresting form.
Average customer rating:
- A beautifully presented anthology of the art and the artists who pioneered the first native style of American landscape painting
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Different Views in Hudson River School Painting
Judith O'Toole , and
Arnold Skolnick
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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ASIN: 0231138202 |
Book Description
Hudson River School artists shared an awe of the magnificence of nature as well as a belief that the untamed American scenery reflected the national character.
In this new work, color reproductions of more than 115 paintings capture the beauty and illuminate the aesthetic and philosophical principles of the Hudson River School painters. The pieces included in this volume reflect a period (1825-1875) when American landscape painting was most thoroughly explored and formalized with personal, artistic, cultural, and national identifications. Judith Hansen O'Toole reveals the subtleties and quiet majesty of the works and discusses their shared iconography, the ways in which artists responded to one another's paintings, and how the paintings reflected nineteenth-century American cultural, intellectual, and social milieus.
Different Views is also the first major study to examine closely the Hudson River School artists' practice of creating thematically related pairs and series of paintings. O'Toole considers painters' use of this method to express different moods and philosophical concepts. She observes artists' representations of landscape and their nuanced depictions of weather, light, and season. By comparing and contrasting Hudson River School paintings, O'Toole reveals differences in meaning, emotion, and cultural connotation.
Different Views in Hudson River School Painting contains reproductions of works from a range of prominent and lesser-known artists, including Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederic Kensett, and John William Casilear. The works come from a leading private collection and were recently exhibited at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.
Customer Reviews:
A beautifully presented anthology of the art and the artists who pioneered the first native style of American landscape painting.......2006-05-07
Different Views In Hudson River School Painting by Judith Hansen O'Toole (Director and CEO of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania) is an expansive and beautifully presented anthology of the art and the artists who pioneered the first native style of American landscape painting. Providing readers with an illustrative compendium of examples supported by an informative and "reader friendly" text, Different Views In Hudson River School Painting delves deep into the study of many various artists in terms of their diverse styles and productivity. A perfect edition to personal, academic, and community library Art History collections, Different Views In Hudson River School Painting is very highly recommended and informative reading.
Book Description
“International interest in this distinctive art form was renewed by Sherwood, whose personal collection is considered the world’s most comprehensive. Captivating and commanding, this opulent compilation superbly show-cases vivid new interpretations of familiar subjects.” —Booklist. “Equally important for both botanical and art collections.”—Library Journal.
Customer Reviews:
Reference .......2007-01-11
This book is very helpful, especially as a reference for anyone learning botanical illustration or anyone wanting to learn about specific botanical artists.
It's beautiful art work also makes it very nice as a "coffee table" book for others to admire.
Great Contemporary Botanical Art.......2005-05-07
As a rank beginner in watercolor and pen and ink I much appreciate the effort it takes to produce great illustrations of natural objects. Shirley Sherwood has brought together her remarkable collection of modern botanical paintings (and some ink renderings) in "A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks" and made them accessible to the public. It is certainly an impressive effort.
Unlike many styles of illustration, botanical art usually involved a finely detailed painting on a white background, occasionally with additional smaller drawings or paintings. Occasionally a background is also provided, but most have no background. The renditions of just about every artist featured are extremely well done and it is hard to pick a favorite. Kate Nessler's watercolor of Rose Hips & Oak Leaves, Mariko Imai's exquisite watercolors of carnivorous plants, Elizabeth Dowle's paintings of fruit, Francesca Anderson's detailed ink renditions of sunflowers and cacti, and John Wilkinson's ultra realistic (complete with insect damage and hover flies!) watercolor of Ligularia, are just a few of the treats in this magnificent book. It sure makes for a tough standard, but a worthy one, for us beginners!
A great book for artists, botanists and anyone interested in plant illustration!
A superb, international collection of botanical art........2002-05-30
This is an excellent collection of botanical illustrations reproduced in very detailed, rich color on quality paper. Artists from all over the world are represented with brief biographies of each one. I think this book is one of the best books to have if you love botanical illustration and would like to see examples done by highly skilled, scientifically accurate illustrators. Just as good or better than the first Shirley Sherwood collection book.
Book Description
New York City's American Museum of Natural History is a national treasure, attracting four million visitors annually. Its dioramas-a dazzling mixture of nature, science, and art-have inspired young and old alike, and are world-renowned examples of the unique diorama craft: art in the service of science. Now, in the only book of its kind, readers get an insider's view of these "windows on nature," witnessing their creation step by meticulous step.
More than forty of the museum's finest dioramas are featured here, depicting the fauna and flora of myriad ecological environments. Stephen Quinn, a diorama artist at the museum, introduces the explorers, naturalists, painters, sculptors, taxidermists, and conservationists behind these three-dimensional marvels, and explains how their collaborations make the displays so lifelike. This enchanting book is the perfect gift for nature lovers, art enthusiasts, and museum goers everywhere.
Customer Reviews:
Monuments to Wilderness.......2007-09-16
There is nowhere beneath a roof, anywhere on earth, that means more to me than the great diorama halls of The American Museum of Natural History. It is stunning (and, really, rather sad) that it has taken this long for a popular book to be written about these magnificent works of art and science, but at least it has been done well. (It is also gratifying to see the book getting such good--and well deserved--reviews here.)
For many millions of people habitat dioramas have been their first taste of the beauty, calm, and nobility of wild creatures and wild places. More people are familiar with nature documentaries these days, and since I love good documentaries too I can't really complain about that. Nonetheless there are some things that habitat dioramas, when done well, can convey that the flickering image, even on an IMAX screen, just can't. No medium portrays the spacious calm of wild country, and the simple dignity of wild animals, better than dioramas. It's also important to remember the valuable record dioramas can provide: many of the dioramas in this book are of places no longer wild.
Stephen Quinn's credentials for writing this book are probably as good as anyone alive. He started as an artist for the museum and has been an important force in helping keep the medium alive through the dark years of the 60s to 80s, when across the U.S. it was frequently neglected, if not despised, by curators though not, blessedly, by the general public. Things are at least somewhat better now, and Mr. Quinn is now project manager for exhibitions at the museum. He has done a fine job with this book. The text is engaging and informative and the photos are big and beautiful.
I do have a few quibbles. He sometimes uses the word "captured" for animals collected (read killed) for the dioramas. I'm sympathetic with why he felt he had to do that, given what he's trying to do with the book and given the cultural forces with which he must contend. The moral issues behind hunting and museum collection are complex and beyond what a book like this could be expected to cover. Nonetheless, animals are never "captured" for taxidermy.
I should hasten to add that animals do not need to be killed specifically for taxidermy. Many if not most animals mounted for museums in the last few decades died in zoos, were hit by automobile traffic, etc. That generally was not a realistic option at the time these dioramas were created.
My other reservation is deeper, but harder to articulate, and I don't have a real solution to it. I also know that a lot of readers will be unsympathetic with it. I'm not completely comfortable with "behind the scenes" stuff in anything other than technical manuals, trade magazines, etc. The people who made these dioramas were of course just people but had high ideals (ideals that Mr. Quinn without question shares) and they wanted the dioramas to be about their _subjects_. His behind the scenes writing will engage people more with the medium and is interesting in itself, no argument. But how much does it really help to have people thinking "I wonder if that rock in Diorama Z is the one that employees used to go to make out behind on their lunch hour."?
I don't know the answer, and so I can't really fault the author. I also recognize that many of the reviewers here loved that aspect of the book. My hope, and I'm sure it's the author's as well, is that it will all stay in perspective. Let's hope that's right. It would be very sad to see dioramas become the subject of the kind of psychologizing and trivializing that permeates the world of "fine" art.
That said, this is a beautiful and well-written book about a noble, if often neglected, realm of art and natural history. If you've read through a long review like this one about a book on this subject, I promise you won't regret owning it.
Beautiful........2007-05-12
Stephen Christopher Quinn, Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History (Abrams, 2006)
Dioramas are amazing things. Looking at them may not make it seem so, but that, more than anything, is testament to the artistry practiced by the men and women who construct them. Windows on Nature goes behind the scenes of the construction of the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.
This is a coffee-table book, so there are a large number of excellent pictures of the dioramas themselves accompanying the text on how they were created. Both are as fantastic as they are fascinating. If you're a fan, this is a must-have. ****
great nature book.......2007-01-16
This was a gift for my mother who visited this museum years ago. It brought back great memories we had when we went. The book was very well done.
unbeatable and unique book on the Museum.......2006-07-26
I am not a scientist nor museum professional, simply a museumgoer. This book is a clear and attractive presentation about the dioramas that have helped define this wonderful museum for decades. Anyone who has ever visited the American Museum of Natural History will be captivated by the behind-the-scenes perspective presented. Understanding this background adds depth to our appreciation of the habitats. Quinn must have dug up old diaries, records and I wonder if he even listened in on some conversations as well because he offers little known factoids which are fascinating to read about and which enhance our experience as a museumgoer. I highly recommend this volume to anyone who has visited the museum. For those who have not visited, the book provides a wonderful view of what you've been missing!
What a Gem!.......2006-06-04
I found this treasure at my local bookstore (could have got it cheaper here!), looked it over, walked away, came back and looked again, walked away again, but couldn't find anything else I wanted as badly. It is an elegant masterpiece. I happen to thrill at anything remotely connected to taxidermy, but this book will also interest those who like nature, museums, or art.
This book is specifically about the dioramas of one museum, but in telling how they were constructed - taxidermy, foreground, and background painting - it is enlightening to anyone who loves natural history museums in general. There are color photos of the dioramas today, and black-and-whites of the artists working on various stages of their development decades ago. The step-by-step pictures of how a huge elephant mount is put together are nothing short of fascinating. Then, in addition, there are behind the scenes stories about how each diorama came together, and some hair-raising tales of specimen collecting in Africa.
If I have a complaint, it is this: the author has written the text as if only addressing fellow New Yorkers, assuming his readers have already been to this museum and seen these dioramas in person. "Think back to your memories of visits to the grand diorama galleries of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City." I can't help but feel a bit excluded, having never been there, although I am perfectly able to appreciate the exhibits based on the museums I have had the pleasure to visit. Perhaps he underestimated the broader appeal this book would have, but at any rate he unknowingly sparks a desire in the rest of us to try to get there someday!
Customer Reviews:
Great Pix and Better Info.......2001-11-06
This book has terrific photographic reproductions, and interesting detailed information about still life, from its origins to the present. As an art teacher, and someone interested in the history of art, I found both the visual and verbal information really valuable.
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