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Painting Sunlight and Shadow with Pastels: Essential Techniques for Brilliant Effects
Infuse your paintings with light and life!
Whether you work outdoors or indoors, understanding the effects of light and shadow is key to making your art lifelike and engaging. Rather than providing a one-size-fits-all recipe for painting light, this book shows you how to capture the particular ambient qualities of any scene before you, be it a gloriously clear morning, a rainy afternoon, or the joyful dance of sunlight on water.
Master pastel artist Maggie Price shares techniques for painting beautiful light, rich shadows and convincing reflections.
10 step-by-step demonstrations tackle a diversity of lighting situations, encompassing various weather conditions and times of day.
Five contributing artists explore different styles, approaches and subjects, including landscapes, water scenes and people.
Concepts are demonstrated with pastel but are applicable to any medium.
An illuminating read for beginning and experienced artists alike, this book will help you engage your viewer by achieving that captivating sense of "being there."
Whether you work outdoors or indoors, understanding the effects of light and shadow is key to making your art lifelike and engaging. Rather than providing a one-size-fits-all recipe for painting light, this book shows you how to capture the particular ambient qualities of any scene before you, be it a gloriously clear morning, a rainy afternoon, or the joyful dance of sunlight on water.
Master pastel artist Maggie Price shares techniques for painting beautiful light, rich shadows and convincing reflections.
10 step-by-step demonstrations tackle a diversity of lighting situations, encompassing various weather conditions and times of day.
Five contributing artists explore different styles, approaches and subjects, including landscapes, water scenes and people.
Concepts are demonstrated with pastel but are applicable to any medium.
An illuminating read for beginning and experienced artists alike, this book will help you engage your viewer by achieving that captivating sense of "being there."
- GenresArtReferenceNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 27, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 13, 2025
This book is an instructional text for pastels. It’s focus is an using light and shadow to create form, addressing different lighting and shadow conditions. The author specifically addresses the predominant sky conditions, sunny, cloudy and rain. She also talks about color under these conditions, reflections and shadows. In each, the changes of color are discussed addressing the conditions affecting the light color and intensity.
Each section starts with a detailed description of what is going on with the light and why. Then proceeds to a number of step-by-step painting instructions that you can work through.
In addition, the paintings used as reference are very good, after working through the book, it still serves as a nice book to flip through for the images.
A few of the work-through paintings are done by different artist, giving a fuller study than the author (presumably) could provide on her own.
Although some of the instruction was rather obvious, I still enjoyed reading through the comments and the example paintings.
Each section starts with a detailed description of what is going on with the light and why. Then proceeds to a number of step-by-step painting instructions that you can work through.
In addition, the paintings used as reference are very good, after working through the book, it still serves as a nice book to flip through for the images.
A few of the work-through paintings are done by different artist, giving a fuller study than the author (presumably) could provide on her own.
Although some of the instruction was rather obvious, I still enjoyed reading through the comments and the example paintings.
May 19, 2019
Pastel painting
Lovely collection of techniques , ideas and tutorials by pastel masters. Pastel artists would love it. Step by step instructions are nice.
Lovely collection of techniques , ideas and tutorials by pastel masters. Pastel artists would love it. Step by step instructions are nice.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews