Customer Reviews

Portrait and Figure Painting Book: A Comprehensive Guide to Painting Male and Female Portraits

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This book is billed as a comprehensive guide to painting male and female portraits, children's portraits, and the nude figure in oil. It contains 400 illustrations with over 250 color plates and includes 30 step-by-step demonstrations in full color. The paintings are all by George Passantino.

The book starts with a few pointers on materials and some black and white plates illustrating the painting of facial features. From there it's straight into the 10 adult portrait demonstrations. Each has from 7 to 11 color plates detailing the steps and each plate includes discussion on colors used and features modified, etc. This is followed by a discussion on composition, lighting, drawing and sketching.

The next section, children's portraits, follows exactly the same format with 10 children's portrait demonstrations and the same discussion afterward.

The final section begins with a section on painting the torso, arms and legs. It then goes through 10 nude figurative demonstrations. All are female, different poses, and each is accompanied by a similar number of color plates and discussion. This section ends with a discussion on body proportions, lighting, and drawing.

The portrait and childrens demonstrations cover different sexes, ages, and races. All told this book is a very nice set of portrait and figure demonstrations. It's suited for the beginning or intermediate artist. If you're familiar with any of the other painting books by Wendon Blake this is the same format only much larger.