-- Brings painting to life by making it fun and enjoyable. -- Designed for people who have never painted before. -- Based on the methods used in the "Simply Painting" PBS TV series. The Simply Painting series is a completely new, no-nonsense approach to watercolor and acrylic painting. Its unique techniques simplify the process of painting, unlock many secrets, and prove that anyone can paint. The series is presented in full color, with large type and an easy to follow, step-by-step method of painting. The first book in each series presents an introduction to painting for beginners, with basic information on watercolor or acrylic painting, and the materials needed. Volume Two in each series builds on the lessons previously learned, but can also be used on its own.

Introduction to Paint It Simply Casual Flowers

The beauty of a watercolor painting lies in its diaphanous layers, delicate strokes, and luminous washes. However, the very features that define the beauty of the medium can make it difficult to master. This complete guide to understanding the relationships between color, value, wetness, and composition unravels the mysteries of watercolor to help your practice evolve. Experienced teacher and acclaimed artist Tom Hoffmann offers a unique, inquiry-based approach that shows you how to translate any subject into the language of watercolor. With Hoffmann as your guide, you’ll learn the key questions to ask yourself at every turn and time-tested methods to help you reach solutions. Hoffmann’s thorough explanations and step-by-step demonstrations delineate the process of composing a painting in watercolor, while art from more than thirty-five past and present masters, including John Singer Sargent, Ogden Pleissner, George Post, Emil Kosa, Jr., Mary Whyte, Trevor Chamberlain, Lars Lerin, Torgeir Schjølberg, Piet Lap, Leslie Frontz, and Alvaro Castagnet serve to illustrate and inspire. Whether you’re a serious beginner or a seasoned practitioner, this book will guide you toward the all-important balance between restraint and risk-taking that every watercolorist seeks.

A quality, realistic work of art is a comprehensive visual synthesis of a lot of, knowledge and observation. The artist perceives the world around him with different eyes than people in everyday life. He is interested in the essence of the things he wants to paint and penetrates into the natural laws that determine the appearance of things.The book Realistic Oil Painting will teach you the necessary basics to realistically depict any subject you choose. In the first part of this book, you will learn how light and shadow affect the color and appearance of things around us, how to mix the right color you need, exactly what types of underpaintings and what colors are most suitable for underpainting, and especially how to put this theoretical knowledge into practice. Therefore, the second part of the book is devoted to practical examples of painting individual subjects using various painting techniques. This book aims to acquaint the reader with the basic issues of layered and direct painting and thus becomes a practical guide for every artist.

Painting for Performance removes the mystery from painting and gives beginners the terms, tools, and techniques to approach their unpainted set with confidence. Covering the mechanics of paint and its many implementations in set design, this book provides simple and effective step-by-step instructions for painting a variety of surfaces to look great on stage.

Why does the artworld often privilege one cultural form over another? Why does it grant more attention to reviews in, say, Artforum over ARTnews? And how can an artist once hailed as visionary be dismissed as derivative just a few years later? Exploring the ever-shifting estimations of value that make up the confluence of artists, critics, patrons, and gallery owners known as the artworld, Timothy van Laar and Leonard Diepeveen argue that prestige, a matter of socially constructed deference and conferral, plays an indispensable role in the attention and reception given to modern and contemporary art. After an initial chapter that develops a theory of prestige and the poignancy of its loss, the book looks at how arguments of prestige function in systems of representation, various media, and art's relationship to affect. It considers twentieth-century artists who moved not away from, but toward figuration; looks at what is at stake in the recurrent argument about the death of painting; examines the decline and an apparent return of sensual pleasure as a central attribute of visual art; and concludes with a look at the peculiar function of prestige in outsider art. Illustrated with artwork by David Park, Jorge Pardo, Gerhard Richter, Anish Kapoor, Cecily Brown, Howard Finster, and others, Artworld Prestige provides an engaging guide to the changes, debates, and shifts that animate aesthetic judgments.