7 Keys To Great Paintings

Provides down-to-earth, lighthearted instructions for developing basic painting design skills, sharing step-by-step demonstrations and game-like tips while placing an emphasis on watercolor techniques.

A liberating approach to interpreting modern and contemporary art, focusing on twenty major artworks from around the world and representing a diversity of styles, mediums, and artists. With modern art’s proclivity for self-expression, originality, and the abstract, great works can often seem indecipherable. This book provides the tools to help interpret the seemingly bizarre and often intimidating aspects of modern and contemporary art by exploring twenty works in terms of seven key perspectives: history, biography, aesthetics, experience, theory, criticism, and the market. Author, artist, and art historian Simon Morley shows how twenty well-known but little-understood works of art can serve as useful gateways not only for understanding each other, but also for appreciating works by the same artists and the wider world of art in general. Morley points to visual and theoretical dimensions of art that are not immediately obvious, reconstructing the perspectives of artists and the context within which works were made. Seven Keys to Modern Art is a liberating approach, offering a highly practical and universally applicable method of art interpretation and appreciation.

The whys and hows of the various aspects of landscape painting: angles and consequent values, perspective, painting of trees, more. 34 black-and-white reproductions of paintings by Carlson. 58 explanatory diagrams.

A fly-on-the-wall account of the smart and strange subcultures that make, trade, curate, collect, and hype contemporary art. The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion. In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.

The author spotlights 50 common problems encountered by the beginning painter and provides simple, logical solutions. Each problem is shown in a typical beginner's painting and then the author shows the solution in an improved version of the student painting. Illustrated primarily with examples of oil paintings.

A unique guide to making sense of modern and contemporary art through seven different approaches, focusing on 20 major artworks from around the world.

A unique system for jump-starting artistic creativity, encouraging experimentation and growth, and increasing sales for artists of all levels, from novices to professionals. Have you landed in a frustrating rut? Are you having trouble selling paintings in galleries, getting bogged down by projects you can’t seem to finish or abandon, or finding excuses to avoid working in the studio? Author Carol Marine knows exactly how you feel—she herself suffered from painter’s block, until she discovered “daily painting.” The idea is simple: do art (usually small) often (how often is up to you), and if you’d like, post and sell it online. Soon you’ll find that your block dissolves and you’re painting work you love—and more of it than you ever thought possible! With her encouraging tone and useful exercises, Marine teaches you to: -Master composition and value -Become confident in any medium including oil painting, acrylic painting, watercolors, and other media -Choose subjects wisely -Stay fresh and loose -Photograph, post, and sell your art online -Become connected to the growing movement of daily painters around the world

No matter what medium you are working in, you can create paintings that are interesting to your viewer. Popular painter and instructor Tony Couch shows you how! Tony Couch maintains that the key to producing credible work lies within the mastery of two basic skills: drawing and design. There are only a few simple principles of design at the foundation of any successful painting, and Tony Couch demonstrates how you can apply these principles to create visually appealing paintings. Once you begin to understand and use the principles taught in this book, you can consciously incorporate them into your work. You'll learn to make your paintings interesting through color harmony, repetition, balance, and dominance, but at the same time create visual appeal through variety, contrast, and gradation. Tony Couch's Keys to Successful Painting breaks down the fundamentals of painting design. Couch demonstrates how to arrange shapes, size, lines, color, and values to create stunning compositions. Because Tony Couch reduces design to a few rules applied to a limited number of elements, you'll find his ideas easy to remember. The sheer number of paintings included here that illustrate these principles allow you to see how they work in practice. Painters of all mediums can create unforgettable works with Tony Couch's invaluable design advice. Tony Couch received his bachelor's degree from the University of Tampa and studied with Edgar A. Whitney at the Pratt Institute in New York City. During a 31-year career as a commercial airline pilot, Couch advanced his watercolor painting skills at workshops with Ed Whitney, Milford Zornes, Robert E. Wood, Zoltan Szabo, and others. He has written articles on watercolor instruction for North Light, American Artist, and Palette Talk, and has produced a popular series of videos on watercolor painting. He teaches watercolor workshops worldwide and has won over 50 awards. Couch maintains membership to a number of art societies and is also the author of Watercolor: You Can Do It and Watercolor Techniques.

These pages practically glow with Kevin Macpherson's rich and powerful paintings! He shares his techniques for quickly capturing the mood of a scene in bold, direct brushstrokes, with step-by-step instructions that make it easy—simply a matter of painting the colors you see. Follow his lead and you too, can create landscapes and still lives in a vibrant, impressionistic style.