Landscape Illusion: A Spatial Approach to Painting

I have found this book to be an excellent reference for those artists, such as myself, who have long used acrylics but have tried dabbling with watercolors, but with not as much success. Daniel Chard gives a wonderful approach to using acrylics transparently and achieving a watercolor-type effect - without the drawbacks of either medium. His section and examples of brushwork (and finger techniques) alone were worth the price of the book. Excellent composition material is a bonus.

This book is easily one of the all-time great books on painting. It is not just a book on highly 'realistic' landscape painting in acrylics, rather it is an application of analytical thinking about painting to the particular problems of landscape. In a market saturated by fluffy and useless how-to books, this dense and meaty offering is one of the few that stand out as a must-have for anyone who is serious about representational painting.The section on composition is one of the most complete overviews of the subject I have seen to date; it includes topics such as unity and variety, the effects of 3-D illusion on composition (or vice-versa), the dynamics of the rectangle, left-right 'reading', and some deep analysis of Chard's own paintings. In other sections Chard discusses his rationale for representational painting, the concept of 'analogous' imagery, viewer's expectations for visual space, and details his methods and working processes. Each topic is covered with wide-ranging and carefully considered throughness.Chard communicates his insights with great clarity and detail. As a result this is a real reader's book, it has a lot of text in it along with the illustrations. If large paragraphs make your eyes glaze over you may find this book daunting, but struggle on and you will most likely find that the information and food for thought were worth it.Chard's book may not answer all your questions about painting, but it will provide a great deal of food for thought, and a pattern of principles and analysis that can be applied to a wide range of challenges and mediums in the visual arts...

This book presents a thoughtful, analytic, and sometimes esoteric, approach to landscape composition and painting. The example plates are gorgeous and support the text. The step by step plates clearly demonstrate the approach. The close ups show fine brush and color techniques. The final chapter presents a series of exercises for the reader to try. I did and improved my techniques considerably.