Painting-the

In answer to reviewer "Patricia", there are 5 companion videos to "How To Paint Portraits From Photographs" available. They total nearly 10 hours on 5 VHS cassettes in NTSC, PAL, or SECAM formats. For details, send an email request to the author at kaolink@msn.com

The author also gives free painting advise. He welcomes "help" questions from budding portrait painters and professionals alike.

Happy painting!

This artist's instructions are the best that I have seen. I just started painting in 1993 and one of my passions is portrait painting. I did not know how to start and when I found this book in my local library I immediately purchased it. The artist takes you step by step with very detailed pictures. I only wish I could purchase his videos; however, I have been unable to find a source from which to purchase them. I would like to see more books from Mr. Du Toit!

How sad that this book is out of print. It is a wonderful book that deals with the process of isolating colors. First it starts you with a simple project and then progresses within each study exercise that you do. My gray view finder from class has now seen better days, however, I will always carry one with me and used it even to capture items for my journaling.

This book uncovers the mystery of painting. For anyone who wants to grasp the basic concepts of color in a very visual manner. A CLASSIC! If I had found this book sooner, I would not have paid so much for art instruction.

One of my first grade students brought this book into school one day. I read it and decided I had to have it. Lois Wyse wrote a humorous story perfect for a Grandparents' Day Celebration or just for casual reading for children of all ages.

A cute and heart worming story about a girl and her Grandmother. I love this book with all my heart. The book was fantastic!

This book is so awsome! If you want to be an awsome painter than you should order this book! I garuntie that if you read this book through, and paint by its directions than you will be selling pictures like me! I just started out and couldn't paint in a square and I just sold my last painting for $5,000!

This book is awsome it taught me how to use oil paints and now I'm selling paintings! I heighly recamend buying this book if you want to get good at painting!

The very dust-jacket with its dynamic detail from Hodgkin's Old Sky strikes the right note in this intelligently presented and visually seductive review of the painter's career. The excellent quality of the illustrations, their logical placing directly opposite the pertinent text, marginal page references, the choice of type-face and the luxury-feel paper all make the mere handling of the book a real pleasure.
Far from being of mere coffee-table appeal, however, the author's cool authoritative voice makes one feel that here is a critic in whose hands one is safe. Such a gem of wisdom as 'whatever residue of inexplicability lodges in a work of art is also its only hope of an afterlife' establishes his impeccable credentials as a discerning critic. Graham-Dixon deals with Hodgkin's seminal influences, his eclecticism, his evolving theatrical style, his preoccupation with the vagaries of memory and its transmutation into art. 'Hodgkin does not set out to paint what the world looks like, but what it feels like.' His work has the quality of intimacy which makes its own demands on the viewer who would engage with it, Graham-Dixon observes in a book which is lucid and comprehensive without ever wearying the reader.

Andrew Graham-Dixon's passionate book about the work of Howard Hodgkin, has the detail and insight serious students of this important artist want. This book is as the first monograph to be published on this artist,a very important purchase. If like me you thirst for really good reproduction,the colour plates are large and do justice to the paintings.

Running across a Howard Hodgkin exhibition forever revolutionized my formerly negative view of modern art. It has opened my soul to new areas of art enjoyment not experienced previously. This book has many plates of his work and provides very interesting reading. Let his beautiful art and colors wash over you... Enjoy!

This well illustrated and multifaceted book is an important addition to any library. If only for Marla Price's catalogue raisonne a very valuble addition not in other publications about this important artist. I found the exchange of letters from Hodgkin to John Elderfield insightfull and full of the sort of detail on techniques hard to find elsewhere.

Michael Auping has written a compassionate opening essay on this sensitive man and the development of his work.

Susan Sontag writes about Hodgkin and art after modernism,with a wry and wonderfull humour.

All of these writings are punctuated with marvellous colour plates.

This book is a must.

Gillian Solomon. END

Although i've never heard of this book, it was evidently better then others. I browsed through it in the book store and found clear pencil drawings, good text and surprisingly detailed content. There are many pages and many illustrations for each part of the body. Different muscle layers are covered as well as bones(front, back, side, above and underneath views for each!) and movement.
Its week side is lack of muscle effects on the skin, so you'll have to get a figure drawing book for that. In addition, a new reader might get lost(as i did) with the new jargon and muscle names, but you get used to it.
Oh, and there are many muscles and bones that no artist will ever need to draw, so if it's not what you're looking for, there are cheaper alternatives.

This is the most thorough and easy to understand anatomy book I have used. It covers the skeletal muscles of the human body. Anyone interested in the body's form and function would find this useful. As a Massage Therapist I have increased my skills by studying from this text. The drawings are clear. The origins, insetions and functions are minutely covered.

Hunt Slonem (b. 1951) paints the winged creatures of the air (birds and butterflies of all sorts), ocelots, saints, mysterious guardian faces, and occasionally Rudolph Valentino. These iconic images are often suspended in space, either appearing or disappearing through a veil or grid/cage (hidden, hiding or trapped?), which sometimes mutes their otherwise vivid colors. Slonem uses light, space and pattern masterfully to display the totemic spirituality of his subjects. And the resulting paintings celebrate that spirituality in works that are gloriously, wonderfully, joyfully beautiful.

Almost all of this volume is devoted to reproductions of Slonem's work, with a few photographs of his studios (themselves works of art) mixed in. Color-reproduction is excellent and the works are beautifully displayed. The selection of paintings covers a broad period of time from the mid-1980s though 2001 and presents a representative sample of Slonem's subjects. The plates appear to be arranged thematically (with birds at both the beginning and the end), rather than chronologically. Donald Kuspit's essay is mostly helpful in putting the spiritual quality of Slonem's work into words, although he occasionally lapses into psychobabble. Minor criticisms -- a few pictures that appear to be out of focus (or enlarged beyond their capacity to render a sharp image), a table of contents that does not match up to the actual pages for the Bibliography and Collections, occasional confusion about which captions go with which pictures -- are annoying but not enough to outweigh the joys of this volume, which deserves to reach a wide public.

For the last 20 or so years many of us have been in deep admiration for the lushly romantic paintings by the singular Hunt Slonem. Here is an artist who truly lives in his work and we are the richer for it. Slonem captures the magic in the exotic and makes even the mundane transporting. His best known paintings are of his ongoing preoccupation with birds of the tropical vein: he lives with them, nurtures them, is obcessed with their spiritual stance as a meeting point between heaven and earth. But his talents are not wholly absorbed by his aviary. Slonem paints ocelets, monkeys, tigers, saints, mythical beings and other subjects, along with his passion for portraiture of exotic people. Rudolph Valentino, go-go boys, princesses, et al find their way into elaborate baroque frames that adorn not only the artist's home, but in collections and museums throughout the world.

Donald Kuspit does his usual fine writing in capturing the quintessence of Slonem's visual messages. The color reproductions are excellent and as lavish as the talent of the painter. A truly beautiful Monograph!

Tons of beautiful tracings of prehistoric art and some beautiful photographs. The tracings are just as exciting as the photographs. I've barely glanced at the text, but it's an art book - who reads em?

With 185 black-and-white figures and 36 color photographs, this book is a treasure trove of ancient art. Since I bought this book mostly for the graphics, I was well pleased. 176 pages total

This book should be in all school libraries. The excellent illustrations bring the accurate text to life in a compelling way. I give 2-3 hr presentations in French or English as a voyageur. This book certainly covers more than I can in such a way. I would recommend it whole-heartedly as background for anyone interested in the period and the characters.

Every spring in the late 1700's canoes would leave from Quebec and head for upper Lake Superior. At the same time trappers from deep in the central and Rocky Mountain regions of Canada would head for the same location with the fruits of their trapping labors over the winter. They would meet for a couple of weeks of trading and partying. Then they would laboriously paddle back to where they had come from.

Howard Silvertson captures this time with short clear descriptions and beautiful watercolors that really make the history come alive. It is a part of history that is often forgotten. It's fascinating to imagine what it was like to live in those times. This book captures the feeling. This book should be in every school library.