Keys to Successful Landscape Painting

Make no mistakes about it, this is a good book. As the other reviewer pointed out there are 50 examples of errors and corrections. Each example has a problem painting and an improved version of that same scene. The pictures are once half to two-thirds page each, so they are large enough to see what he's talking about. The only down side is that only 32 are color while 100 are black and white. If you crave color, you might try his 1993 Keys to Successful Painting... I haven't seen it, but I suspect it's very similar instruction with more color plates.

Most other oil painting books tell you about brushes, mixing colors, what kinds of canvases, etc. This book assumes you already have those books on hand. The author was an illustrator, then he became a teacher, and apparently he saw his students making the same mistakes over and over. This book has 50 "keys", things like, "don't let your composition lead the eye off the page". Then on the left side he has an oil painting that is amature (wrong) with a paragraph disscusing it, and on the right side of the page he has a new painting of the same scene, but with the corrections, and a paragraph discussing that. His categories are: Drawing (11 keys), Light (5 keys), Shadows (7 keys), Color (15 keys), Space (6 keys), Trees (2 keys), Skies (4 keys). When color is an issue, then the examples are in color. But when it comes to things like persepecive, bad composition, or values, a black and white illustration does the job just fine. Even though this is for landscaping and he uses oil, I can see that his keys are applicable to all kinds of subjects. When I look at masterpieces in a museum, they don't make any of these mistakes. I look at my paintings and wonder what is wrong. I know "something" is wrong, but what? I saw a lot of my mistakes in his examples. I would recommend this book to any painter using any medium on any subject.