Customer Reviews

Portrait Painting Atelier: Old Master Techniques and Contemporary Applications

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book contains some valuable information and tips on this difficult topic. The skin tone colour mixing part is especially helpful, and the illustrations are informative and high quality. I really like the way it goes into detail on different elements of the face, on application of paint and on toned grounds. Nevertheless, this book suffers from the same problem as all of them do. The step by step demonstrations are all made by the author/artist himself. This results in a lot of demonstrations basically using the same approach in different variations. I would really like to see a book of this kind with demonstrations by different artists, displaying different approaches and techniques! If you are very interested in glazing techniques, this should really satisfy you, since all the demonstrations involve a lot of glazing. That beeing said, the book actually includes a mini-demonstration by another artist with a different approach.

All in all a great book for the intermediate painter who wants to learn more about depicting the human form.

The author presents a coherent approach to painting in traditional "Old Master" style. To absorb the wealth of
valuable information takes several readings, as well as working through the exercises and much practice. Techniqes
are clearly described.
There are some impressive examples of painted portraits -- but not by the author. The step by step demos she herself
does are not inspiring and result in stiff, "tight", uninteresting images.
This book will be most useful to painters who have some experience and have already encountered the technical issues the author describes. Beginners will probably find it overwhelming.
Incidentally, the author's mentor Domenic Cretara, who supplies the introduction, is a modern master in his own
right, and his work is well worth looking up online.

I received this book yesterday and love it.

I think this will be one of those books which keep growing in value long after they have been sold out. This book is in the same class in regard to the traditional indirect methods of painting as Richard Schmid's Alla Prima in regard to direct painting. Although its focus is on portraiture the techniques and principles can be applied to figure painting and even still life. I have been studied traditional painting for two years and still find gems of advice nearly on every page. I can foresee that this book will be my companion for a long time.

The book is richly illustrated but the quality of illustrations is not consistent. Most of the other artists' paintings are images of reasonable quality. Author's paintings, though, look a bit drab. I suspect not because she can't paint but because the photographer stuffed it up. This becomes evident if you look at images depicting tools, blobs of paint etc. They look equally drab. The biggest disappointment is the quality of images representing swatches for colour mixing exercises. The author seeks to demonstrate subtle nuances in tone and temperature. However the quality of images basically ruins her effort as it serves as a poor illustration for her recipes. The darks, in particular, nearly all look the same. I am sure the author did not mean it that way.

Five star for the author, one for the photographer of her artwork.

The quality of the work by the writer of this book was extremely dissapointing. The portrait on the cover of the book is done by another very accomplished artist and when venturing further into the material it is clear that the authors work is well below standard. I would not recommend this book to individuals who are serious students of master works. If they want to pursue classical realism they would do far better with Anthony Ryders publications.

As an intermediate portrait painter,I really enjoyed this book and found many of the exercises with toned grounds particularly useful. The one area I found frustrating was the colour exercises since many of the suggested paints use names that are not in common use but are used more by individual manufacturers such as Rosso Veneto, Barok Red, Terra Rosa and Puzzuoli Red (from a volcano in Italy?) These paint colours can vary widely from manufacturer to manufacturer and since no brand names are specified, it makes it difficult to replicate her exercises. Flesh Ochre,for example, which is a mixed colour, is made of different pigments in Sennelier(PR43,PY43,PR102)and Old Holland(PY42,PR188,PR102). I finally resorted to doing some of the exercises using the paints on hand (mostly Gamblin,Daniel Smith,and Holbein) and using these charts as a reference. This is a book that will continue to be a valuable reference and I recommend it highly.

The step by step approach I liked, but the paintings by the author look clumsy and dead. Also this is not a survey of old master techniques. It is only the author's one single technique. She did not even paint the portrait on the cover which is a lot more beautiful than her own paintings. The writing is very dense and she uses the technical terms interchangeably when they mean different things. "I scumbled a glaze of raw umber"- well which one was it, a glaze or a scumble? The troubleshooting steps at the end of the book are vague and condescending and I think also kind of misleading. I thought "Classical Painting Atelier" from the same series was a lot more useful.

There have been volumes written on the way the Old Masters approached their painting process, their techniques, the limitations of the materials at hand, and the amazing portraits they were able to produce. With the panoply of paints, equipment, mediums and surfaces that are available to the artist today, it is still not clear how we can strive to develop the beautiful, sensitive, glowing results of these Old Masters - until now. Ms. Brooker does this in a well written, 'user friendly' manner. She starts with the premise that as artists, we have to take an organized, intellectual approach to our painting (a novel concept considering what we were exposed to in the 60's and 70's). She launches us on this path of an organized thought process by addressing the basics of studio practices (organized palette = orgainzed thinking)and even includes a review of the preparation of quality surfaces and their importance to producing quality paintings (a part I found to be very useful).

Ms. Brooker then addresses the use of color and pallette management, toned grounds and paint application to prepare us for the painting processes. Before diving into the hands on work of painting the portrait, she provides an abreviated look at the normally bone dry subject of facial anatomy. This is enough to whet the appetite of those who would like more detail while stasfying the basic needs of the majority of those interested in portraiture. Instead of pages on the underlying anatomy of the 4 key features of the face, she walks us through a process of observing the expressive nature of each followed by practical techniques for painting them. I found these very helpful in reassessing how I approach the painting eyes and nose.

The final two sections on the process and associated demos of painting portraits, give the reader excellent examples of how one can begin to achieve result akin to those of the Old Masters. Ms. Brooker takes through the preparation of the ground, blocking-in, underpainting, paint applicaiton, finishing with the judicious use of glaze to bring forth the glowing life force we seek in our paintings.

This book clearly demonstrate Ms. Brooker's thesis that a thoughtful, dare we say intellectual, approach to portraiture is essential. This, coupled with being able to take advantage of the concious choice of ground, underpainting and transparent nature of paint, will allow the reader / painter to begin the realization of the desired optical impacts we so admire in the work of the Old Masters.

I was greatly disappointed in this book when I compared it to the other two books in the "Atelier" series. The best painting by Ms. Brooker is displayed on the cover design. The other of her paintings do not match that quality. There are some interesting portraits done by other artists that give some insight and pleasure, but they are all too few. The color tips in the book are generally useless. As a student of old master techniques, I did not find her examples illuminating or educational. I wish I had not purchased this book.

Not worth the price...Im disappointed. Drawing Atelier is a much better book. Get that instead. Daniel E. Greene's instructional DVD's a wonderful too.

like most of these books the cover is not an example of what to expect inside. infact the paintings inside are nothing like the cover at all- why nobody can write a book explaining how the classical style is done is beyond me .there allways seems to be a reluctance for people to share the techniques .the picture on the cover should not be there its missleading