This in depth painting demonstration explains a practical way of achieving sfumato effects with modern art materials when painting Leonardo da Vinci's the Mona Lisa. Featured also in Skin Tones in Oil: 10 Step by Step Guides from Old Masters, this painting project has proved to be sufficiently lengthy to warrant a book in its own right. The chief section of this book comprises step by step images and text that gives instructions on how the Mona Lisa was completed via 5 stages. Preparatory sections, a troubleshooting guide and glossary are also included. Find extra features on managing tonal balances, rendering subtle shadows, working in glazes, dry brushing and using simple art materials. Completing such a momentous project has been broken down into manageable pieces, creating an invaluable experience for any portraitist. This book's aim is to make painting the Mona Lisa inclusive. Contemporary art materials and modified art techniques have therefore been used. However, this book offers a way of achieving great sfumato effects in the style of Leonardo. Book's dimensions: 8x10in and 45 pages. Colour illustrations throughout.

This book was not so much written as constructed, somewhat like a painting. It is a collection of teaching notes from nearly thirty years, each note created in the crucible of an art class. A comment from one of his readers: Ryno Swart has written a book as magical as the most successful painting . . . it says what needs to be said-no more, no less. It gets to the heart of the matter and is peppered with pithy and relevant notes such as "Half the skill of painting is leaving it alone." "You can't make a painting work; you can only allow it to work." "A painting must be conducted like a military campaign; planned and organised and strategised." This is a book that should not lie on a coffee table or grace a bookshelf. This is a book that should be propped up in your studio or wherever you work and should soon become spotted and splashed with paint.

In 1855, Asher B. Durand, a founder of the National Academy of Design and a leading member of the Hudson River School, wrote a series of articles for his son's art magazine, The Crayon. The nine articles, Letters on Landscape Painting, outlined Durand's thoughts on learning how to paint landscapes. They are considered by many to be the textbook for the Hudson River School. In the early 1900s, Birge Harrison, a prominent figure in the American Tonalist movement and a director of the landscape school of the Art Students League, gave a series of lectures to the students at the League's summer school in Woodstock, New York. He later compiled those twenty-one lectures into the book, Landscape Painting. Then, as now, the book was considered to be a standard work for students. This volume presents Durand's and Harrison's writings together for the first time. We will never know what each might have thought of their words being combined in such a way, however, over the years hundreds of budding landscape painters and professionals alike have found value in these writings. It only seems fitting that the textbooks of two of America's great landscape painting movements be made available in a single work.

Hold up a painting from a local craft fair next to a masterpiece. Can you tell the difference? If so, you have talent. That is one of the messages in this new book. Most people think that painting a masterpiece is enormously difficult and requires a rare genius. They are wrong. That is the other message. When someone asked Claude Monet how his paintings were done, he replied, "Well, I hope nobody ever figures out how I do it " This book tells how. Not which color to apply where, but rather it leads you to a particular frame of mind and to a process that will let your painting evolve in its own way and result in a work that is much better than what you thought you could do. There are some secrets here, but they're not hard to carry out once you know about them. Some of these secrets died with the Impressionists, but they are explained here - and they are really very simple. They deal mostly with what happens inside your head as you paint. Practical tidbits of advice that I have never seen described anywhere else.

Expanded from its original version as an in class text, this information packed book takes an empirical approach to solving many of the common challenges associated with oil painting. Exploring aspects such as the effects of materials, lighting, composition, color, and drawing, Tim Rees's "Problem Solving" helps artists get past the technicals of oil painting and get to the business of making art. The book contains 26 black and white plates of the author's work and plentiful illustrations to illuminate the text, taking the reader through the format of Rees's 5 week class taught at the Palette and Chisel Academy of Art. This is followed by optional assignments for the reader to complete, as well as an appendix of useful problem solving information that would arise occasionally throughout the course. With concepts that apply across any style of realism, this practical companion is an invaluable tool for those wishing to sort through the complex world of oil painting.

Painting is not a vagabond's craft. From the 15th through the 17th Centuries, painters studied past techniques in order to evaluate the possibility of improvement through a process of logical progression. This book is divided into chapters (Keys) that explain each a major step forward in technique and propose the master to whom credit should be given.