Paint Along with Jerry Yarnell Volume One - Painting Basics

I am a big Jerry Yarnell fan. He is an excellent teacher and it really shows in his instructional books. I had the good fortune to attend one of his workshops, and really learned a lot. I expect to be able to continue to learn from these books. From what I can tell, the books do not have to be followed in a specific order. I have the first four volumes in the series. What I plan to do is to work on the techniques presented in this first volume and at that point, I'll just pick paintings from his other books that I like. The paintings are selected to help you develop specific techniques that will be of good general use and he gives step by step instructions and includes color photographs of the paintings at each stage to give you an idea of what each step should look like. He gives instructions for mixing the colors required at each step too. He doesn't give an exact formula for the colors since brands and grades of paints vary so much. What he does do is to give you the colors and a relative idea of how much to use of each. You then can develop your eye by mixing until the color looks right. It doesn't take long to figure it out and it is much better for developing your color mixing skills than a rote formula. Jerry also uses a limited number of colors in his palette. This really help with developing you color mixing skills too. He tell you what brushes you need and how to use them as well. If there is another set of instructional books that is better than these, I haven't found them. If you go to his web site [...] and click on Books, you can see slide shows of the paintings that are taught in each book. This will give you a better feel for which ones you want to try.

Yarnell makes it easy. He covers everything including materials and terminology. The step by step leasons are easy to follow and provide a wealth of information from which you can build your own skills and learn the basics to experiment on your own. I would also suggest Yarnell's videos, one in particular covering techniques so that you can actually see what is going on.

I have always had some artistic skill but I never painted a picture before picking up this book. I am amazed at the results. For the first two projects I bought cheaper canvas board instead of pre-stretched canvas because I assumed the first few paintings would be hit-or-miss at best. But the very first lesson I did from the book got scooped up by a brother-in-law and is framed and hanging on his wall! I've got more requests than I can fill now and some are hanging in a local restaurant (for sale!) A big thanks to Jerry and a hearty recommendation to anyone who wants to try painting in acrylics. He will walk you through everything from tools to paint to finishing touches. One dissapointment was no seascapes! I've had two requests for them. I recommend this book over Bob Ross'. There are no knives or tricks used here and the effects are more artistic.

I've painted on and off for several years. Until yesterday, my mom had never picked up a paintbrush in her life. We put this book in between us and neither one of us had any trouble following the instruction.Jerry Yarnell uses acrylic paints but we use oils and still found this book to be very helpful. He guides you step-by-step in everything from sketching your scene onto the canvas to adding the last highlight. He even tells you what paints to mix, brushes to get and strokes to use.The pictures in this book are incredible and you can paint houses, snow, landscape...even cows! I've truly found this book to be more useful than the professional painting class I'm currently in!