As a self-taught artist, a lot of my knowledge has come from books. I have also learned a lot through videos, most of them from YouTube, but books offer a more permanent and practical reference. Very often, I will learn about a book from the artist in a video, and that will trigger my quest for that book!
Thankfully for my budget, several years ago I discovered an online used book store called Awesomebooks.com. Located in the UK, it is a great source of older and very reasonably priced books. The shipping costs have gone up slightly over the years, but it is still a really good deal, and it helps to keep books out of landfills! I also love to browse used book stores for special finds, and I needed a practical way to keep track of what books I had already bought (I did still manage to buy one book twice, but in my defense, the author had sneakily changed the title from one edition to the next!!). So I found a free App called Libib, which allows me to scan the book’s barcode and keep my book inventory on my phone (they also have a Web version). More recently, I have found a few sources for free electronic versions of books, particularly older books whose copyrights have expired. I have occasionally downloaded copyrighted books to check out if they are worth buying, and I have found some that were and some that definitely weren't!! I also have a short wish list of a few books that I really want to buy, but that are, even in used form, prohibitively expensive. One that comes to mind is “Alla Prima”, by Richard Schmid, considered by many to be the best book on painting ever written. I have read it and agree, but I can’t justify for now the hundreds of dollars it would cost to get it, even used! Recently I subscribed to Amazon Prime, mainly for access to Prime Video, which has a good selection of things to watch, certainly compared to what we can get on regular TV…. Included in the subscription is access to a lot of free electronic books, including a good selection of older art books. So right now I have about 20 books in various states of “readingness”, some physical, some electronic. They include: “The Pastels Book”, by Bill Creevy, “Composition in Art”, by Henry Rankin Poore, “Classical Painting Atelier”, by Juliette Aristides, “The Creative Drawing Course”, by Richard Taylor, “A Color Notation…”, by A.H. Munsell, “Keys to Drawing with Imagination”, by Bert Dodson, “The Elements of Drawing…”, by John Ruskin, “The Art Spirit”, by Robert Henri, “Sacred Geometry”, by Robert Lawlor, “The Art of Composition”, by James Cowman (also a wonderful website all about Composition), “The Practice and Science of Drawing”, by Harold Speed, “A Treatise on Painting”, by Leonardo da Vinci, “Composition and Outdoor Painting”, by Edgar Payne, “Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures”, by Henry Rankin Poore, “Vision and Design”, by Roger Fry, and “Composition”, by Arthur W. Dow. As you can see, most are not about painting per se, but rather about the fundamental, and to me elusive, building block: composition. Simply put, composition is the arrangement of shapes in an image, and largely what makes or breaks a painting. It is what makes an image, even an abstract one, “look right”. You know good composition when you see it, but I find it very hard to create. That’s why I have so many books on the subject, in the hopes that one of them will open that tiny door to my brain and give me the AHA! moment I have been searching for! I have included a few pictures of my current art bookshelves. If you see anything you would like to borrow, or if you have any book suggestions, or if you just happen to have a copy of Alla Prima gathering dust, please let me know! Also, if you try out Awesomebooks or Libib, let me know what you think! (I get no commission from them but I wish I did! ;-) )
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AuthorMy name is Claire Bureau. Archives
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