Customer Reviews

Learning to Look at Paintings

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

 

 

Composition, space, form, tone, color, subject-matter, and other pictorial elements of the plastic arts are considered and their interrelationships explained in this handy introduction, with over ninety well-chosen illustrations, some in color.
The author, an experienced art teacher, has also included illuminating essays on drawing and its purposes, looking at prints, a handy glossary of art terms, and references for further reading.
Highly recommended as eminently suitable for an Introduction to Art course, and for anyone else interested in learning to see more in paintings.

(The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

I enjoyed this book on the principles and elements of design. I think she selected exemplary pictures to illustrate her point. I especially enjoyed the chapter on "subject matter". The only drawback of this book was having to flip back and forth from the reading to the painting. Also, she talked about some of the paintings color combinations that were printed in black and white. In the paperback version some of the details of the paintings were lost because they were reproduced on a small scale. Overall, though I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about design elements.

Mary Acton organizes her technique of appreciating art well. Breaking the parts down to Composition, Space, Form, Tone, Color and Subject Matter, the reader is taken on a systematic course to discerning a work of painted art. With plenty of examples to illustrate her points, and the clear, straightforward manner of writing, it is easy to understand and follow.

I have 2 issues with this book -- neither of which targets the writer. (1) I appreciate the handy size, making this book very portable, but it is too small to properly show the works of art. Reproducing master works on offset printing with any appreciable quality is already a tremendous challenge without the size compromise. And more grievously, (2) there are only 29 color pages, with 1 image per those pages. For a book on Art, that is woefully under par. Mary discusses points on color against black and white images, many of which lack contrast data, especially in shadow regions, rendering her notes impossible to grasp. I had to refer to other books and the Internet to supplement this publication.

Frankly, at the prices that Routledge charge for their books, I'd expect more than what I got. Yet, the content more than made up for the production shortcomings. So much so that I also ordered Mary's other book -- Learning to Look at Modern Art. I'd recommend this to anyone who is interested to learn how to better appreciate art. Just keep the Google Images page open. ;)

This book is written in a plain, clear style---it is a good reference book to look up anything about art. The chapters are short.