The Joy of Art: A Creative Guide for Beginning Painters

This book was love at first sight! I bought it last year and I am still in love. It is a lot of fun and mostly a joy to look at.

This book is a lot of fun to look at and browse. The layout is clever and unusual and offers inviting illustrations of art technique and history. The knowledgeable and enthusiastic authors encourage beginners to dive in and start creating. I really like the open door approach. Unfortunately, the exercises they provide are often needlessly complicated, poorly organized and hard to follow. Other weaknesses are no page numbers (the table of contents has numbers though?) and obscure, rambling passages that might have been better left out. Still, this book contains many gems of technique and history - ready for discovery by the beginning and experienced artist alike.

This book was excellent. Done in a handwriiten style with many colored drawings, it tells about all media, techniques, and history of art. No matter what your medium is, you should enjoy it!

I have never before seen a book on art like this one. It is a fascinating tour of art history - from prehistory to the modern day, as well as a highly accessible "how to" guide for people of all skill levels who have any desire to create art. The authors are so clever in the way they simplify what otherwise seems to the layperson to be such a complex process. Everyone in my family (ranging in age from 7 years to 77 years) has been enraptured with this book - it is already a family treasure!