Painting-the

Topal provides excellent examples throughout including lovely color reproductions of both children's and professional artwork. Her explanations are clear and the materials list is not extravagant for most of the projects.

Every regular classroom teacher would benefit from the beautifully layed out art elements and principles in this book. At the very least it would be worth having as a resource in a school library. This book is a keeper!

Ning's painting style is fairly distinctive and is not as loose and spontaneous as some painters, but is really lovely. Nevertheless, his approach helps to show beginners how they can use the brush to construct the different strokes comprising the subjects. He also shows examples of common mistakes for the strokes, which helps you to learn quicker. I teach Chinese brush painting to beginners and have found this book to be a great reference and I also recommend it to my students.

He also includes a section on how to wet-mount a painting (applying the rice paper to a heavier backing to remove wrinkles and make it less susceptible to tearing). I have found this information to be invaluable and not readily-found elsewhere.