Product Description

Did you ever wish you could go to a really good art school and learn how to paint in oil? Or perhaps you have painted for years and are still struggling with color mixing and wish you could find a good teacher to help. In the Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted, author Kathleen Staiger gives you a complete painting course you can take at home. Crystal clear, step-by-step lessons build from learning about light and shadow, brush control, and foolproof color mixing, to still life painting, landscapes, and portraits—every topic is covered in clear text, diagrams, illustrations, and demonstrations, with guided projects in every lesson. Tips and extra help sections appear throughout the book to help with common problems. Staiger has taught oil painting for more than thirty-five years; many of her students are now exhibiting and selling their paintings. Every painter from beginning hobby painters to BFA graduates has questions. Here atlast are the answers!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19620 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-01
• Released on: 2006-07-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Kathleen Staiger has taught drawing and painting for more than thirty-five years while developing her popular oil painting courses and color mixing workshops. She is an award-winning gallery artist with a masters degree in art and literature from Hofstra University and is currently on the faculty of the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Florida, where she lives.

Customer Reviews

Oil painting can be tricky - this book helps control oils
I got this book from the library. I always knew I could draw, and I always wanted to oil paint. I have a lot of books on oil painting, but I still struggle. Oil paints are tricky, sort of like playing the violin: you have to learn to control them before you start creating with them.

Now, it IS for beginners, but it also says for "experienced" because she shows you tricks that maybe you didn't cover in other classes.

She incorporates drawing lessons with the painting lessons. If you can't draw and shade a sphere, how are you going to understand a bush? She doesn't just have list of brushes, but she has exercises on how to blend paint with them. Each exercise in the book builds on the next.

It is true that you are not going to paint a masterpiece with this book, but I do think you will say, "Oh, that's the problem", and then you can move forward with your own talent.

She has one whole page on Taming Thalo Green, which no one else has in their books. She has a shading lesson in primary colors, and in secondary colors. She tells you how to dull a color without changing the value (mix it's exact complimentary in the same value, then add it). She explains glazing and scumbling. All the exercises are simple, so that if you are talented or not, you can do them. For example, she doesn't have you glaze a portrait like Rembrandt, but an apple.

As she gets to harder things, she introduces more drawing. For example, when she gets to landscape, she talks about drawing perspective, as well as atmospheric perspective. In landscapes, she explains the tricks for trees and rocks (do the darks first). When she gets to portraits, then she talks about drawing the face. I don't think her portraits are all that hot, but she shows the steps then you can do them too, and infuse your talent.

You will not create a masterpiece with this book, but you will have tools to create your own masterpiece because you won't be stumped with atmospheric perspective, how to do trees, how to make a shadow, etc. Just like you can't play the violin if you don't know where the notes are and how to get a good sound out of the bow, you can't oil paint if you don't know things like how Alizarin Crimson is going to behave differently from Cadmium Red Light. She will help you with this.

She has taught beginning oil painting for 30 years, so she anticipates your problems and questions. Oil will not longer be something to fight with, but something that will do your bidding.

A new era in art
Not only was l able to correct old bad old habits, l have learnt an incredible amount from this art instruction book. Highly recommended to both beginners and accomplished artists.

Fun & Useful
I'm an artist (or, rather, used to be). I consider myself an illustrator, but haven't painted in a long time. This book is great, as she discusses mixing colors, selecting brushes, using the medium and so on. This is a fine book!!!