The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists [Paperback]

Kathleen Staiger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2006

Everything you always wanted to know about oil painting...but were afraid to ask. Or maybe you weren’t afraid—maybe you just didn’t know what to ask or where to start. In The Oil Painting Course You’ve Always Wanted, author Kathleen Staiger presents crystal clear, step-by-step lessons that build to reinforce learning. Brush control, creating the illusion of three dimensions, foolproof color mixing, still-life painting, landscapes, and portraits—every topic is covered in clear text, diagrams, illustrations, exercises, and demonstrations. Staiger has taught oil painting for more than thirty-five years; many of her students are now exhibiting and selling their paintings. Everyone from beginning hobby painters, to art students, to BFA graduates has questions about oil painting. Here at last are the answers!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kathleen Staiger has taught painting and drawing at every level for more than thirty-five years. A graduate of Hofstra University with masters degrees in art and literature, she is currently on the faculty of the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Florida, where she lives.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill (July 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823032590
• ISBN-13: 978-0823032594
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.5 x 10.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > Arts & Photography > Painting > Oil Painting

More About the Author

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kathleen Lochen Staiger was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her talent was recognized at an early age and she sold her first pastels and portraits in oil while still in her teens. She attended Hofstra University in New York on an academic scholarship and graduated with a bachelor's degree in art education and a master's degree in art and humanities.

After a few years of teaching art to school children, she decided to make a change and teach oil painting to adults. She knew immediately that she had found her niche. She found many adults who had always wanted to learn how to paint but had been prevented by the need to provide for a family. She discovered others who had taken courses that never gave them basic skills.

Kathleen is an enthusiastic and dedicated teacher and continually looks for ways to improve her classes. The result of these efforts was the development of a popular course in basic oil painting and a method of color mixing that took the frustration and guesswork out of trying to find the right color. Her courses became very popular and her students began urging her to write a book of her methods. She set to work, and in 2006 "The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted" was published by Watson-Guptill with world-wide distribution. It was immediately popular and continues to be a top seller in its niche.

While her beginning course is geared to realism (which she regards as the best way to teach control of brush and paint) she considers herself primarily an abstract artist who occasionally creates paintings that have both realistic and abstract elements. Her award-winning paintings are included in private and corporate collections throughout the U.S.

Kathleen lives with her husband in Vero Beach Florida where she teaches beginning and advanced classes at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. Visit her website at kathleenstaiger.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Substantive, December 12, 2006

By 

Brian Asquith - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists (Paperback)

Staiger has compiled a wealth of information of use to the beginner in oil painting. Pretty much all the basic considerations of what constitutes a successful painting are covered.

She opens with a good overview of the materials required: paints, brushes, supports, easels and a useful piece on mediums and cleaners. Staiger appears to acknowledge that of her audience some are merely curious as to what oil painting entails through to the serious beginner looking for a good foundation of knowledge. Hence economy is apparent with a minimal range of brushes being recommended along with using good student grade paints (Winsor & Newton - Grumbacher), along with old tuna-fish cans for holding the medium. This is followed by:

i) A fairly comprehensive and easy to understand section on rendering 3D form on a 2D canvas.

ii) 20 pages on colour and colour mixing (a further 4 pages on mixing greens appears later in the landscape section).

iii) The previous chapters are brought to a conclusion with an exercise in painting a cylinder and a sphere.

iv) Painting the Still Life is next (30 pages of info), covering issues such as composition, sketching, painting.

v) Landscapes (40 pages): linear and aerial perspective, a landscape palette, components of a landscape - sky, water, trees, grass, sand, dirt, and concludes with a landscape painting exercise.

vi) Painting Portraits - drawing the head and correct placement of features, mixing skin tones, finishing with a portrait painting exercise.

Overall there is a lot of information here that should benefit the beginner. The book is also aimed at Experienced painters although I'm not sure that there is anything major that an Experienced oil painter shouldn't already know.

The exercises are somewhat rudimentary in terms of the painting style (hence the 4 stars). I'd much prefer the exercises push the painter somewhat, possibly even have two exercises per subject matter - one to get across the rudiments followed by a second adding to it showing you various tricks, flourishes etc., that can give your painting that little "extra", elevating your work from the standard twee style that poliferates.

Watson-Guptill have produced another book worthy of place in the beginner artist's library. You might want to consider buying Brian Gorst's "The Complete Oil Painter" (also by WG) that compliments Staiger's book well.

59 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oil painting can be tricky - this book helps control oils, November 24, 2007

By 

Carolyn J. (Ventura, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists (Paperback)

I got this book from the library. I always knew I could draw, and I always wanted to oil paint. I have a lot of books on oil painting, but I still struggle. Oil paints are tricky, sort of like playing the violin: you have to learn to control them before you start creating with them.

Now, it IS for beginners, but it also says for "experienced" because she shows you tricks that maybe you didn't cover in other classes.

She incorporates drawing lessons with the painting lessons. If you can't draw and shade a sphere, how are you going to understand a bush? She doesn't just have list of brushes, but she has exercises on how to blend paint with them. Each exercise in the book builds on the next.

It is true that you are not going to paint a masterpiece with this book, but I do think you will say, "Oh, that's the problem", and then you can move forward with your own talent.

She has one whole page on Taming Thalo Green, which no one else has in their books. She has a shading lesson in primary colors, and in secondary colors. She tells you how to dull a color without changing the value (mix it's exact complimentary in the same value, then add it). She explains glazing and scumbling. All the exercises are simple, so that if you are talented or not, you can do them. For example, she doesn't have you glaze a portrait like Rembrandt, but an apple.

As she gets to harder things, she introduces more drawing. For example, when she gets to landscape, she talks about drawing perspective, as well as atmospheric perspective. In landscapes, she explains the tricks for trees and rocks (do the darks first). When she gets to portraits, then she talks about drawing the face. I don't think her portraits are all that hot, but she shows the steps then you can do them too, and infuse your talent.

You will not create a masterpiece with this book, but you will have tools to create your own masterpiece because you won't be stumped with atmospheric perspective, how to do trees, how to make a shadow, etc. Just like you can't play the violin if you don't know where the notes are and how to get a good sound out of the bow, you can't oil paint if you don't know things like how Alizarin Crimson is going to behave differently from Cadmium Red Light. She will help you with this.

She has taught beginning oil painting for 30 years, so she anticipates your problems and questions. Oil will not longer be something to fight with, but something that will do your bidding.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly good!, March 22, 2007

By 

Cynthia Adams "Artist-in-training" (Round Lake Heights, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Oil Painting Course You've Always Wanted: Guided Lessons for Beginners and Experienced Artists (Paperback)

I would encourage anyone interested in purchasing art books to go to your local library and check some out before you purchase. That is what I did and that is why I bought this wonderful book. Her presentations are very clear and easy to understand. She has carefully constructed lessons, just as if you were taking a class. I like the structure. I like the fact that there is a whole lesson spent learning to use the brush to achieve different techniques. Each lesson takes me about 2-3 hours to complete, but when I am done I feel I have actually made some progress. The lessons build on previous lessons so you actually can see progress from week-to-week. Finally I am sticking to a schedule and actually painting instead of just thinking about it. The practice is what brings the improvement. Her book just makes it easier.