Product Description

Knowing how to use a brush properly is essential for effective oil painting. Brushwork Essentials shows artists everything they need to know to render a variety of elegant strokes, along with other exciting techniques like paint mixing and brush shaping.

Weber makes mastering each technique easy. He provides detailed, easy-to-follow instructions, step-by-step demonstrations and complementary artwork that highlight each brushstroke as it appears on the canvas. Readers will also learn how to use different strokes to achieve specific effects, such as lighting, shadowing and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41036 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

From Library Journal
This unique book deals exclusively with oil brushwork. Painters learn how to render expressive form and texture using the myriad shapes and types of brushes available. Mixing and loading paint, cleaning and shaping brushes for maximum control, and picking the right paint for specific types of strokes are all covered. As Weber writes, the book's purpose is to show "how to use your brushes to make that rascally oil paint do your bidding." Weber uses his own award-winning, highly refined paintings to illustrate the book. Recommended for large collections.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Weber spells out the fundamental differences between smooth brushwork and the calm mood it can impart, and the rough texture of a scumbled or thickly painted surface expressing an energetic aura. Photographs show the exact premise behind each of Weber's lessons, from what the paint looks like when you vary the consistency with mediums or solvents, to mixing with a brush or cleaning your brushes to best maintain them. Illustrations are followed by images of finished paintings, reinforcing the specific points discussed. Weber writes with humor and confidence, keeping things lighthearted whether he is teaching the mechanics of holding a brush or a wet-into-wet application of paint on canvas. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Mark Christopher Weber is an award-winning artist whose work appears in many corporate collections including Shell Oil, Marathon Oil, Grand Canyon Association and the Federal Reserve Building. He is also represented in galleries in California, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Japan. Mark lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Customer Reviews

A-A-A-hhhhh yes.
Beautiful reproductions...
I enjoyed the information about water-soluble oils
so much that I did more research on them and
decided to give them a try.
The information regarding brushes and the way
to use them was thorough and met my expectations.
I don't trust painters who don't establish their
good credentials by showing examples of their work.
Weber did this, with his "Realistic" and "Flemish"
style paintings which showed his abilities
to draw and paint at a high level.

great reference
I am an inexperienced beginner at oil painting who has never taken art lessons. So I read books. This book is exactly what I needed. It simply explains the different brushes, how to load them with paint and how to use them to get different effects. The text is clear and the graphics are great. I'll definitely be referring to this book again and again.

A terrific introduction to oil painting
I'm fairly new to painting, but I have purchased a dozen books on oils, and this one has been the most helpful to me. It's pitched to the beginner or beginner-intermediate artist, not the expert.

Weber mostly makes good on his promise to show you how to do things, not just finished results. He shows you a number of different ways to load a brush, for example "shovel loading, "chisel loading, "tip pull loading," "body loading," and others. The book includes helpful close-up photos of each of these techniques. He then shows you several different ways to apply each of these loaded brushes, again with close-up photos. Using the same kind of closeups, he shows you how to mix paint. I haven't seen this level of detail in any other painting book I've purchased.

The book then goes on to demonstrate several techniques for blending, again using helpful series of photos depicting brushstrokes for blending, different stages in adding transitional colors, and thorough wet-into-wet blending. I really had no clue about blending until I read this material.

The book didn't answer all my questions. I had hoped for some detailed instruction on how to paint water, but while there are "walkthroughs" for painting roses, a mountain landscape, and a human figure, and a couple of shots of water in photos, there wasn't a systematic treatment of water. Also, the book advocates using a "wash" to start a painting without thoroughly explaining why one would do this, although it does include an adequate description of how to go about it.

But these are minor quibbles. I learned a lot from this book. I wish he'd make another, focusing on particular problems in painting, or providing more step-by-step walkthroughs, but this book will keep me busy for a while. I intend to try to reproduce his roses, for example, following his instructions.

One final caveat. Weber happens to use the very same paints I do -- the DUO Aqua water-miscible (sometimes called water-soluble) oils. So for me the book was a perfect match, as he was actually talking about pigments that I'm already somewhat familiar with. Don't get me wrong; mostly his writing has a much broader application to "regular" oils, and he's quite clear about when his comments pertain only to water-miscibles. But part of my enthusiasm for the book is the happy coincidence that he uses "my" paints. For readers who use paints with very different handling characteristics, the book might be slightly less useful. But only slightly less.