Book Review: American Artist Guide to Painting Techniques

This book covers several media, e.g. oil, acrylic, watercolour and pastels. It's not a mixed media book though because each medium and technique is discussed separately. Usually books like this don't have the depth compared to books dedicated to a specific medium. However, I think this book does a good job giving coverage to the different media and their respective techniques.

This book is more suitable for intermediate and advanced artists. It does not have pages talking about the equipment you need. It dives right into the techniques and assuming you have basic knowledge with the medium you're already working with.

The first section is on preparing to paint and teaches you how to prepare your canvas, such as an oil canvas or stretching watercolour paper.

Subsequent sections look at techniques specific to each medium. There are short tutorials that demonstrate the techniques and the explanations are clear and concise. Examples are beautiful. If you're a mixed media artist, there are lots to useful tips to learn. If you only use a specific medium, like I do, then you might wish that the book had more on the medium that you use. And that's the downside of books that deal with different types of media.

The last sections focuses on specific subjects, like buildings, animals, landscape, portraits and other themes.

I find the instructions to be quite enlightening. The examples show very clearly that the simple techniques when used appropriately can get you lovely results.

Overall, it's a great book.

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