The New Oil Painting: Your Essential Guide to Materials and Safe Practices

Description

Here is everything you need to know about getting into oil painting-and maintaining a safe, solvent-free oil painting practice - in a slim, sophisticated guide. Oil painting is an exciting and adventurous medium, but aspiring artists can feel daunted by complex setups and the thought of using harsh chemicals. All of that changes now. The New Oil Painting walks you step-by-step through oil painting fundamentals-which materials you actually need, how to mix paint, how to set up your painting space - and, most revolutionary of all, how to eliminate harmful solvents from your work and replace them with safe, effective substitutes. This instructional handbook is organised into chapters with helpful diagrams throughout illustrating various techniques and tools. Whether you're a true beginner or have been painting with oils for years, you will find that this book has everything you need to build a new, thriving, toxin-free practice.

Kimberly Brooks is a contemporary American painter who lives and works in Los Angeles. The New Oil Painting is her first book.

"A one-stop resource for both experienced and novice artists who want to paint in oils without exposing themselves and the environment to harsh solvents." -Artists Magazine "This is no ordinary how-to-paint book. Instead, artist Brooks assumes readers have mastered the rudiments of the art and focuses on the composition of materials required for painting, such as solvents like turpentine (which, in her opinion, are to be avoided) as well as everything else comprising the paint environment." --Booklist Starred Review "I learned to think about paintings three-dimensionally...among many other things. I now know things about linseed oil its own mother doesn't know." --Cintra Wilson, culture critic for The New York Review of Books "Insightful, straightforward.... I have been painting for a long time, yet I learned many things from this book. It would be a great addition to any studio--keep it near your painting table." --Enrique Martinez Celaya, artist "It's strange, since so many thousands of people enjoy (and are obsessed by) painting, that there is such a lack of good guidebooks. There are some amazing doorstops that are nearly impossible to use, and there are dozens of colorful how-to manuals that offer limited information. Kimberly Brooks's The New Oil Painting is unique in the field: it's comprehensive, up to date, and friendly--exactly what painters need to have by their side." --James Elkins, Chair of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of What Painting Is