Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light & Color

I bought this book which was recommended by an Experienced Oil Painter. The book was easy to follow & contains a lot of visual aid! I enjoyed it & it allowed me to develop my own skills to assist me in this journey of self teaching myself the Art’s of Oil’s!

I love this book! It is full of good solid practical suggestions that result in a better painting. His color-isolator - a piece of cardboard painted with blocks of white, gray, and black, with a peep hole through each color block - is a fantastic idea. I also liked his use of the wooden pear to show shadows, planes, and color. He placed a yellow-green wooden pear on different colored backgrounds, and took photos. The photos are the key - one can SEE how a shadow actually can can take on different hues depending on its surroundings. No guessing. Lois Griffel has a similar study in her book, using paintings of a cube, but there is no way to see how in the world she came up with using some of the colors that she did because it's all just shown through paintings. MacPherson also gives good practical advice on laying out the foundation for the art work - setting up the underlying "bones" of the painting. MacPherson advocates using a very limited palette, and mixing those colors to get the colors you need. The idea is to tie everything together visually. I tried using a very basic palette, and am very pleased with the results. I use acrylics, but the same general principles apply. It forces one to learn to mix colors, and also unifies the painting. MacPherson is also correct when he urges the reader to try to paint an hour every day - practice makes perfect. If one REALLY wants to, one can find the time.... Maybe outside in the daylight is not always possible, but the daily routine and discipline is well worth the effort. Lois Griffel's book is full of beautiful paintings, and tons of narrative, but little basic practical advice. (I also got irritated with Lois' claim that she paints what she SEES, because her paintings are loaded with colors that are not in the original photos. Like gobs and gobs and gobs of rose and magenta everywhere. She does create beautiful paintings, but please - don't tell me that they are a reflection of reality...) Lois' message is that she is much more clever than the rest of us, and maybe she is. Kevin MacPherson's message is YES, you can DO this! I like his message much better. If you can only buy one book,go for Kevin MacPHERSON!

I purchased this book and liked it so much, I looked up where the author was giving a workshop and then took the class. Kevin spends a lot of time in both book and workshop on the 'right color' and the art of seeing. He feels that if you can isolate in your subject the correct color for the brushstroke you are about to paint, you cannot help but jump one of the biggest hurdles to having your painting look like the subject. The book is filled with his beautiful paintings, and lots of tips and techniques. I've been following his work since I purchased the book and going to the workshop, and my biggest mistake was not purchasing one of his paintings. And although the paintings in the book are more than first rate, Kevin has become even more talented in the past few years. You'll love having this book for inspiration and reference. Grade A, from the horizontal paint stroke club.

I've read a lot of painting books and this is one of my favorites. I've read it front to back several times, and I've read through different chapters numerous times. He uses a very limited palette: cad yellow light, alizarin crimson, ultramarine, and phthalo green. I've been using a limited palette since I read his book, although I often alter the colors a bit. People say the palette is too limited but once you master it you can easily change the colors and add others as required. I found they're seldom required.He has a challenge to do 100 starts which is great. I'm current doing this with a group of artists at WetCanvas (search Google). He also has another challenge to paint a 6x8 plein air in one hour every day for 3 months. I'm quite confident that after painting 100 starts and 90 paintings I'll be a much better plein air painter. I also like his suggestion of using a black marker to make a b & w sketch before painting. This helps to see the light/shadow patterns.Overall this book is great. Although it's for oil, his technique will work for any opaque medium. MacPherson also gives workshops and from what I've heard they're very good. The material in the book is what he presents in the workshop!

I am a watercolorist but just knew I had to buy Kevin Macpherson's book, "Fill your Oil Paintings w/ Light and Color". I figured the principles would be the same for all painting and I was right. This book is my best investment of the year.The principles he lays down for building a painting are tremendously helpful, but the best part for me was the opportunity to see so much of his work beautifully reproduced. It was a powerful lesson without words. I am learning to see lots more color in all my surroundings, and even to mix them!

A book full of examples of great paintings by Kevin MacPherson, he keeps the principles of good painting simple. I keep going back to it as my eye becomes more discerning of subtleties in my subject matter and as I gain more skill in the application of oil paint. Anybody interested in a workshop by KMP and others, look for the Plein Air Painters of America (PAPA) web page.