I just bought the book 'Alla Prima' by Richard Schmid, which is his account of how he paints. Schmid is held in high regard among his fellow American realist painters, and I wanted to find out why.
I bought the book from his website, richardschmid.com, for a hefty $49.95, the thick end of £45 when you factor in overseas shipping. For that I got a fair sized paperback, about 10 5/8" by 8 1/2", delivered a couple of weeks later, with 193 lavishly illustrated pages, printed on high quality paper. There's also a hardback version for an eye watering $95.
Schmid's style is realist, and direct. He usually paints from life, and ideally in one continuous sitting. Schmid was taught by William H. Mosby, whose own teachers were contemporaries of Sargent and other well known painters of that time.
Schmid's painting is unashamedly concerned with the look of things - and he certainly has an eye. At times, his rendering skills can seem little more than a vulgar magic trick, but mostly you're just left wondering, somewhat enviously, how it's done. Which he is perfectly happy to explain, and indeed make simple.
He emphasizes the importance of getting it right first time, and sometimes will stop work on a painting rather than risk losing or spoiling what he's already done. Speaking as someone who will grind away at a canvas that has already suffered too much, like a man industriously flogging a dead horse, I'm inclined to think he has a point. This light handed treatment of his does sometimes result in pieces which I think look lightweight and sketchy - but they're always beautifully and tightly drawn.
There's a tension between this tight drawing and his bravura brush strokes. At first glance, some of his more complex paintings look like an abstract jumble. Then the thing jumps into focus and becomes a still life, which somehow looks more real, more solid and convincing than it has any right to.
In the book there are chapters on drawing, tone, edges, colour, and composition, among other things, in which he calmly and clearly tells how he works. One colour exercise he describes is a way of making colour charts of the paints you use, which I can recommend, having made similar charts myself. Getting your hands dirty with this will teach you more in a few hours than any number of textbooks on the subject, and help you mix cleaner, more accurate colours easily. No more thrashing around in mud.
The chapter on edges filled a gap in my knowledge I didn't even know I had, and gave me several new tools for my paintbox that I'll be trying out soon.
I can recommend this book for anyone struggling with the problems thrown up by painting in a realist style. His calm, reasoned analysis and simplification of those problems would have been a big help at the start of my painting career. Things I took years to learn first hand are explained in this book in terms anyone can understand and apply.
I tend to paint and repaint to get the result I want, working from drawings and colour studies and photographs done on site. A painting can take weeks, often because I have to wait until it occurs to me how I'm going to finish it, and will sometimes end up with passages that work well jammed up against areas that look worse every time I take the painting out.
Many realist painters have to deal with this problem of working from life and from studies, reinventing what they see from scraps and memory, and trying to make the resulting patchwork look good. When your subject is too big to paint in one session, 'alla prima', that's what you have to do.
But I will still apply the lessons I'm learning from this book to the studies I make on site from now on.
Long story short? If you paint in a realist style and want to learn some things, this book is well worth the money. Consider it an investment; cheaper than a painting holiday or course, and always there for you to refer to. Painting is a lifelong education, and Richard Schmid can teach you a thing or two. And no, I don't get paid for telling you that.
There are other books for sale on the website, from what I presume is the artist's own Stove Prairie Press, including one on his landscapes which I will definitely be getting next.
I bought the book from his website, richardschmid.com, for a hefty $49.95, the thick end of £45 when you factor in overseas shipping. For that I got a fair sized paperback, about 10 5/8" by 8 1/2", delivered a couple of weeks later, with 193 lavishly illustrated pages, printed on high quality paper. There's also a hardback version for an eye watering $95.
Schmid's style is realist, and direct. He usually paints from life, and ideally in one continuous sitting. Schmid was taught by William H. Mosby, whose own teachers were contemporaries of Sargent and other well known painters of that time.
Schmid's painting is unashamedly concerned with the look of things - and he certainly has an eye. At times, his rendering skills can seem little more than a vulgar magic trick, but mostly you're just left wondering, somewhat enviously, how it's done. Which he is perfectly happy to explain, and indeed make simple.
He emphasizes the importance of getting it right first time, and sometimes will stop work on a painting rather than risk losing or spoiling what he's already done. Speaking as someone who will grind away at a canvas that has already suffered too much, like a man industriously flogging a dead horse, I'm inclined to think he has a point. This light handed treatment of his does sometimes result in pieces which I think look lightweight and sketchy - but they're always beautifully and tightly drawn.
There's a tension between this tight drawing and his bravura brush strokes. At first glance, some of his more complex paintings look like an abstract jumble. Then the thing jumps into focus and becomes a still life, which somehow looks more real, more solid and convincing than it has any right to.
In the book there are chapters on drawing, tone, edges, colour, and composition, among other things, in which he calmly and clearly tells how he works. One colour exercise he describes is a way of making colour charts of the paints you use, which I can recommend, having made similar charts myself. Getting your hands dirty with this will teach you more in a few hours than any number of textbooks on the subject, and help you mix cleaner, more accurate colours easily. No more thrashing around in mud.
The chapter on edges filled a gap in my knowledge I didn't even know I had, and gave me several new tools for my paintbox that I'll be trying out soon.
I can recommend this book for anyone struggling with the problems thrown up by painting in a realist style. His calm, reasoned analysis and simplification of those problems would have been a big help at the start of my painting career. Things I took years to learn first hand are explained in this book in terms anyone can understand and apply.
I tend to paint and repaint to get the result I want, working from drawings and colour studies and photographs done on site. A painting can take weeks, often because I have to wait until it occurs to me how I'm going to finish it, and will sometimes end up with passages that work well jammed up against areas that look worse every time I take the painting out.
Many realist painters have to deal with this problem of working from life and from studies, reinventing what they see from scraps and memory, and trying to make the resulting patchwork look good. When your subject is too big to paint in one session, 'alla prima', that's what you have to do.
But I will still apply the lessons I'm learning from this book to the studies I make on site from now on.
Long story short? If you paint in a realist style and want to learn some things, this book is well worth the money. Consider it an investment; cheaper than a painting holiday or course, and always there for you to refer to. Painting is a lifelong education, and Richard Schmid can teach you a thing or two. And no, I don't get paid for telling you that.
There are other books for sale on the website, from what I presume is the artist's own Stove Prairie Press, including one on his landscapes which I will definitely be getting next.
