I've had many emails over the years asking me how I learned to paint and for resource suggestions, so I thought I'd list the books that were the most influential to me when I was learning. I made that sound past tense, but I'm actually still learning and always will be.
First, a confession: I look at the pictures in most art books, and only skim the texts, and I have yet to do an exercise from any how-to book that I own. It's a personal failing.
Here are some books that I actually did read because they were so informative and relevant:
- Richard Schmid:"Alla Prima". It's a sweeping, common sense, and generous survey of oil painting methods and materials. It taught me how to choose my palette, start and build a painting, and troubleshoot the inevitable hiccups that every painting presents.
- Charles Reid: "Painting What You Want to See". My aesthetic is more aligned with Reid's than Schmid's which makes this book especially useful to me. I prefer a narrower tonal range and place more emphasis on color than Schmid, and Reid simplifies the vast subject of color logically and with excellent exercises (none of which I've done, I'm ashamed to say, but I did have some "ah ha" moments reading about them and seeing his examples.) Reid's long history of teaching painting has made him succinct in his teaching. He knows the most common problems that students have, and addresses them clearly.
- Gregg Kreutz: "Problem Solving for Oil Painters". A whole book about fixing the many problems that paintings throw at you: shape, value, colour, paint application, and more. Again, Kreutz is more of a tonalist than I am, so his solutions aren't always the ones that my paintings need, but I found this book useful enough to read all the way through and still refer to it occasionally.
- Virgil Elliott: "Traditional Oil Painting". I did not read this cover to cover. Rather, I've treated it like a comprehensive technical resource for oil painting. It's excellent for learning about various methods for building paintings, pigment characteristics, painting supports, oil mediums, brushes, design, and much more. It's an impressive overview of a massive subject, and I dip into it whenever I have a technical question.
To round out my visual education, I have books on the works of Sorolla, Sargent, Zorn, Bongart, Russian, Swedish, American, and French Impressionism, Uglow, Freud, and much more. I also have a steady stream of books on the works of artists contemporary and historical, realistic and abstract, coming and going from the library. I treat them entirely as inspiration. They show me the varied and creative ways that painters have used colour, manipulated paint, and designed images, and they give me ideas and courage in the studio.
I hope you find these books are a help and a starting point in your own journey in paint.
Happy painting!
