Customer Reviews

The Science of Paintings

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I am a painter and I wanted to know a little bit more about the science of the materials I use. This is why I got this book. Unfortunately, the book only goes into depth on the science of the perception of art (how light reacts to colors like primary and secondary colors). There are other chapters about the materials of various types of painting like oil, tempera, encaustic, but the author only skimmed over these details with very little scientific explanation. Also, the author wrote the book to a crowd of non-artists. He often wrote about artists in third person. This was bothersome since a large portion of the book was over elementary aspects of art- for example "What is Painting?" was one of the topics he went into depth on.

I did find out some interesting facts from the book like honey used to be used as a binder for paints, and that animal glue is in gesso. The chapter on how art historians detect fakes also was pretty interesting too. Beyond these little bits of information though, I found little useful information for my practice.