Practical Course in Drawing and Painting: Step-by-Step Techniques, Advice, and Practical Exercises

This comprehensive manual for beginning art students and serious amateurs presents basic instruction in all traditional art media, both monochrome and color. Starting with pencil, charcoal, ink, and colored pencils, the book progresses to instruction in pastel and sanguine chalks, watercolors, gouache, acrylics, oil pigments, and mixed media. Along the way, readers are instructed in the fundamentals of drawing and perspective, and are shown how to approach still lifes, the human figure, landscapes, cityscapes, and abstract compositions. Also helpful to students is instruction in color theory and in various visual techniques, such as creating visual rhythms with brush or pen strokes, and employing pointillist and impasto procedures to achieve special effects. Hundreds of illustrations show works in progress as well as finished drawings and paintings. Among the latter are reproductions of works by world-famous artists.