Find out what you can do with oil paints. Make brushwork more expressive and add shadows. Try a full complement of creative techniques. Breathtaking examples of finished paintings, analyzed in detail, guide you through a range of themes, including architecture, figures, and landscapes.

This resource provides a wealth of stimulating ideas to help artists--both amateurs and veterans--develop their own pastel style. A new, up-to-date edition of the popular and comprehensive encyclopedia by professional artist Judy. Many manuals on pastel painting take for granted the use of traditional soft pastels, a dry medium that provides the richness and variety of paint colours. Soft pastel is certainly the most versatile and widely used, but the modern range of materials include other pastel types that have their own specific purpose. In this exhaustive A-Z reference for artists of all skills, a variety of different pastel types are detailed, from oil through to water-soluble pastels, amongst the multitude of techniques broken down and easily explained. The book itself is divided into two sections: the first provides step-by-step demonstrations that guide artists through a variety of techniques, from basic colour mixing through to creating special effects such as sgraffito and sfumato. The second part focuses on themes, illustrating how individual artists tackle a number of subjects, including natural landscapes, urban scenes, figures, animals and still life.

This information-packed and comprehensive visual encyclopedia is your key to mastering a whole range of artistic skills. Guided by the expert advice of top professionals, you'll investigate the practicalities of all the most popular painting and drawing mediums and explore the full gamut of subject areas, from landscapes and portraits to flowers and still life. An inspirational one-stop guide to mastering great art. Book jacket.

Finally back in print for a new generation of artists, Ken Leslie's Oil Pastel is the definitive instructional resource on this wonderfully rich and versatile medium. Vibrant and portable, oil pastels are ideal for making quick sketches, producing stunning finished works, and make a great auxiliary tool for artists working primarily in other media. Boasting an astonishing array of color, value, and texture, oil pastels can be layered, scraped, washed, blended, and scumbled to achieve a seemingly endless variety of effects ranging from delicate lines to gooey, impasto crusts. Easily the most comprehensive oil pastel technique book available, Ken Leslie's Oil Pastel: Materials and Techniques for Today's Artist will teach you everything you need to know to create striking work that is authentically yours. Skipping over the flashy tricks and gimmicks that palely imitate true artistic skill, Ken dives headlong into a lively and engaging discussion of every aspect of the medium. With over 40 years' experience as a beloved teacher and collaborator, it's no wonder that every page of this book is jam-packed with substance and detail! Meticulous step-by-step demonstrations that accompany the sections on technique will show you how to use your pastels to achieve nearly any effect you desire. Ken can even teach you how to get a bright yellow to cover black! You will also have the chance to explore experimental approaches to oil pastel painting including, mixed media, 3-D constructions, unusual paper shapes, working with molten pastels, and much more. Perfect for all skill levels, Oil Pastel's thorough overview of color theory and basic painting techniques will help beginners get off to a strong start while advanced readers will surely delight in learning to make custom homemade pastels and new handling techniques. Ken Leslie's exciting and supportive writing style will have you paging through this book time and time again for tips, reminders, and lessons you missed the first time around! With color images of technical demonstrations, comparisons, the author's work, as well as the work of over 40 other artists, Oil Pastel: Materials and Techniques for Today's Artist truly has something for everyone.

"The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques deals with all aspects of materials, techniques, conservation, and restoration in both traditional and nontraditional media, including ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, painting, works on paper, textiles, video, digital art, and more. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in The Dictionary of Art and adding new entries, this work is a comprehensive reference resource for artists, art dealers, collectors, curators, conservators, students, researchers, and scholars." "Similar in design to The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts, this one-volume reference work contains articles of various lengths in alphabetical order. The shorter, more factual articles are combined with larger, multi-section articles tracing the development of materials and techniques in various geographical locations. The Encyclopedia provides unparalleled scope and depth, and it offers fully updated articles and bibliography as well as over 150 illustrations and color plates." "The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques offers scholarly information on materials and techniques in art for anyone who studies, creates, collects, or deals in works of art. The entries are written to be accessible to a wide range of readers, and the work is designed as a reliable and convenient resource covering this essential area in the visual arts."

Here, Elkins argues that alchemists and painters have similar relationships to the substances they work with. Both try to transform the substance, while seeking to transform their own experience.