In a recent post I said I wanted to step up my painting game, and needed tuition to help me do that.
But where to find it?
There are options out there: painters who run their own workshops or schools of art, painters who make DVDs of their instructional videos, painters who write illustrated how-to-paint books, and even painters who do all three.
I'm too skint and lazy to pay for, or attend, a workshop. That leaves me with two choices, videos and books.
When you want to paint better than you already do, learn from a painter who can paint better than you do now. Let that be your guiding principle and you can't go far wrong when searching through all that's on offer.
With that in mind, I have an Amazon wish list with over a hundred books on it. Every so often I check to see which prices have dropped, and snap up bargains from the list. Sometimes they're books by contemporary landscape painters, other times books about painters from the past whose work I admire. The former will tell you how they paint, the latter will contain works that need to be reverse engineered before you can get what you're after.
And what, precisely, are you after? Insight, mostly. A new way of looking at the same things you deal with when painting, that will add an extra tool to your internal toolbox. No matter how much you know, there's a wealth of undiscovered knowledge out there waiting to be applied.
I have to admit, it can be a lottery. Sometimes a book will overdeliver, in which case it becomes a well thumbed staple of my bookshelf. Sometimes a book will disappoint, in which case I quietly relist it for sale on my Amazon seller account.
But where to find it?
There are options out there: painters who run their own workshops or schools of art, painters who make DVDs of their instructional videos, painters who write illustrated how-to-paint books, and even painters who do all three.
I'm too skint and lazy to pay for, or attend, a workshop. That leaves me with two choices, videos and books.
When you want to paint better than you already do, learn from a painter who can paint better than you do now. Let that be your guiding principle and you can't go far wrong when searching through all that's on offer.
With that in mind, I have an Amazon wish list with over a hundred books on it. Every so often I check to see which prices have dropped, and snap up bargains from the list. Sometimes they're books by contemporary landscape painters, other times books about painters from the past whose work I admire. The former will tell you how they paint, the latter will contain works that need to be reverse engineered before you can get what you're after.
And what, precisely, are you after? Insight, mostly. A new way of looking at the same things you deal with when painting, that will add an extra tool to your internal toolbox. No matter how much you know, there's a wealth of undiscovered knowledge out there waiting to be applied.
I have to admit, it can be a lottery. Sometimes a book will overdeliver, in which case it becomes a well thumbed staple of my bookshelf. Sometimes a book will disappoint, in which case I quietly relist it for sale on my Amazon seller account.
