Reviewed by annieb123 on
Oil & Acrylic: Land and Sea: Learn to paint step by step is an expanded reprint and reformatting of a tutorial manual originally published in 2003. Re-released 7th May 2019 by Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 40 pages and available in ebook and paperbound formats. The electronic version of the book has a very handy interactive table of contents along with hyperlinked internal chapter and tutorial headings.
Roughly 10% of the page content is used in the introduction and technique chapter. There's a general tools and materials chapter followed by a very abbreviated technique and color theory chapter. These are followed by 15 complete painting tutorials. The painting tutorials range from 1 page studies to 3+ pages for more complete paintings. The tutorials presuppose a fair amount of familiarity with techniques and materials. I would say that intermediate to advanced painters will get much more out of the tutorials than complete beginners.
The chapters are full of page sidebars with useful tips and technique tricks. Each of the painting chapters includes a palette with color mixtures used. The photos and illustrations are high quality enough that in the full page finished paintings, you can make out some of the artist's underlying brushwork.
This is a useful manual (and a useful series) for the moderately advanced artist.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an eARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- Finished reading
- 17 May, 2019: Reviewed