Customer Reviews

60 Minutes to Better Painting: Sharpen Your Skills in Oil and Acrylic

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is different from the other "how to" painting books. It addresses the greatest artist block--fear. If your canvas is blank because of perfectionist's ideals and being overwhelmed by the "big picture," this book is for you. It takes you through several exercises of timed paintings intended to make you forget about getting it perfect and have fun with your painting. The idea is that with practice you will improve and enjoy painting again.

Craig Nelson is right: "studies" are essential to learn painting and evolve into a good painter. It helps to get to the essence of your subject. I do not know any good painter who did not spend years painting before becoming really good.
This book does not have the perfect title but is excellent in content. The 60 minutes are what it takes to be in tune with what you are painting and finding ways to improve your artwork.
Each lesson presents a different challenge, and also leads you to explore a full spectrum of techniques. Perfect book to get you started on the "right brush"...and get you really in awe of the whole process.

This book is essential for those who need help in getting started painting. Craig recommends items one needs to begin such as paint, palette, mediums, paint colors etc.
He recommends 'quick studies' which help to avoid the fear of failure and help you to begin a painting. Also, the quick studies help you to improve on your style and editing. I think as a beginner this has been an extremely useful book.

This is great book to sharpen your skills as a painter. I feel it's better suited for intermediate to profesional artists. The theory behind quickstudies is to make you decide what is or not important in a painting in a limited time span. To be honest, it took a lot of timed paintings to get used to the speed of a quickstudy. It definitely has helped loosen me up and not paint too tight from the getgo.

This book is all about painting quick studies. I would not recommend this book to professional painters. The author is very particular about what colors to use, what brushes to use, and how much time should be spent on each step of the process. To me, this became somewhat tedious to read. Very little emphasis is given to aspects like composition. The pictures in the book are mostly quick studies with few finished works at the end. The basic message of this book is: paint more, and your skills will improve.

This book will really help you sharpen your skills by removing your fear of a blank canvas and getting you started on real paint slinging. The idea of doing quick studies is similar to the "painting a day" practice for painters to go on the fast track to improvement.

I have been mystified by brushwork despite having read books devoted entirely to that topic. Here I finally saw the "why" of the adage to use the biggest brush you can to paint as much of your work as possible. The brushwork becomes intrinsic to the creation of form and light and gives paintings a spontaneity often missing in beginner works. You can clearly see this in the painting examples given in the book. The author even takes pains to describe which size brush he used for each section of the painting.

Another tip I've found invaluable was to start each study with a two value blocking in of the lightest light and darkest dark of each shape. This REALLY helped me to improve my value contrast overall. This book is a gem among painting books and is applicable to oils or acrylics. Sure there are some grammatical errors in the text, but the content is very good.

I keep lending it out and they keep it!
This book helps you understand the process of becoming a better painter and then shows you how.
I have a BFA in painting and have applied the concepts with exciting results.
I review the book several times a year for inspiration...usually before a vacation or three day weekend.
I have shared with beginner painters and they get the process and techniques too.
Not lending this copy out, they can visit the library.

Good instructions to improve ones painting by doing quick painting studies at 60 minutes or less. It challenges one to skip the details and it teaches you better brush strokes.

I thought this book to be somewhat helpful but really didn't learn anything profoundly new. I loved a few of the paintings but overall other than reinforcing the theme of painting everyday it didn't excite me. It's an alright beginner's or entrance level intermediate artist's manual but there are better oil painting books for beginner's or the advanced intermediate artist such as Bill Creevy's book, Vicki McMurty's or Kevin MacPherson's. I found them to be more beneficial and cover more artistic ground in the areas of color theory and painting structure.

Fast Food Art

There is something disturbing to me about the premise of this book. The whole idea that a painting is under a time limit seems counter to all that is art. Whether a painting took 5 minutes, 15 minutes or an hour seems totally irrelevant to me. Even in trying to achieve a spontaneous quality in a painting, a much better painter than the author once said: "a painting should look loose but not be painted loosely". This is a bit of advice I believe the author of this book could benefit from.

To be fair this painting book could be a good way for a beginning painter to loose the fear of paint as has been previously stated. However in trying to rush a painting in just a few minutes, its not too far within the realm of possibilities to imagine that a beginning artist might be so discouraged from his or hers hurried results, that they may quit painting altogether.

As far as the examples of painting in the book itself, the results are inconsistent. Some were good but some were very weak. What do I mean by weak? I am referring to bad drawing, bad color harmony and bad values and edge control. I would site pages 37, 62, 63, 88 as examples of some of the weaker paintings. The author does display good skill in some of the quick studies but I get the feeling he does not know when his painting is good or when his painting is bad. He simply accepts every painting he completes as good. One of the factors that determines a great artist is an artist's taste; being able to determine what is a good painting and what is a bad painting. In addition his paintings are devoid of emotion, and isn't emotion perhaps the most important factor in art? If he took more time in his drawing, values and edges as well as his intent, the results would be better. How much time? As much as the artist feels he needs to do the job right. The painting would still have the spontaneous quality the artist is trying to achieve but look better and nobody would care if it took 5 minutes or an 5 hours. Just that it was a good painting.

Collectors of art are certainly not concerned with how much time it took an artist to complete a painting. If anything, a collector will be discouraged to hear that the painting they purchased was completed in one or two hours. They want to hear that the artist spent countless hours on their craft. They want to feel that the artist poured their heart and soul into the painting, not that they "churned" out the painting in one hour and slapped a frame on it. Producing dozens or even hundreds of paintings within a short time can only result in something trivial, nothing that has any real substance.

So in conclusion I've coined the words "fast food" to describe the approach this book takes. Like fast food, the resulting painting may at first seem good but over time it will only leave a bad taste in your mouth.