Best painting books according to redditors

Found an Amazon listing for it so you can save it in a wishlist.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0008226741/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i13

I've been drawing for a long time and I can copy anything drawing-wise. I started painting in Photoshop 2 years ago, then started doing oil painting around 9 months ago. I learned the most by doing oil paintings while reading Alla Prima by Richard Schmid. That book and a lot of practice paintings help me get a good feel for color and value, and mixing pigments.

If I didn't learn to mix pigments in oils I probably would have been frustrated using Nicker Poster Color. But luckily mixing in oils and mixing in poster color is pretty much the same. It's not too hard to learn, but you do have to learn it by trial and error. I have a lot of practice mixing colors so using poster paint feels like second nature to me.

As for the process, if you know how to paint in Photoshop you can do it in Nicker Poster Color. It's quite similar to using Photoshop with a 100% opacity brush with size controlled by pressure. There is a watercolor aspect to it too, but only if you add more water to the color mix.

In the actual painting, I learned that laying down base tones before doing highlights helps a lot. What I mean by base tone is the color that gets used the most in a section. "Highlights" are the lesser used colors, and they can be dark/medium/bright. Here's an image explaining it. To reiterate, you want to lay down the base tones first and then apply the highlights.

If you look at my progress pics (linked at top comment) I have some pictures of before and after of painting the big bush on the left. For the majority of the painting I just worked like that. I laid down base tones, and then added highlights.

Tbh, if you want to start painting you just have to dive in. It's something you have to learn by doing I think. I have yet to find a resource better than just spamming practice paintings and reading Alla Prima. I also found Feng Zhu very helpful, especially his podcast and the "self teaching" episode. Hope this helps

important: Also, if you are buying Nicker Poster Color make sure to get a good watercolor brush with it, like this one.

Thanks! There's a few videos I really like, and a book that I started reading.

I tend to go a bit crazy with color, and find keeping a limited palette helps.

Other than that, just regular practice. Like with exercise or coding, I'm finding that taking breaks (a couple days, or week) between bursts of working helps my intution dig out what to attempt improving next.

Hope that helps! :)

Your colors look great, very autumn! So you did great with those.

Another good book to read is Carlson's Guide to Landscape painting
( https://www.amazon.com/Carlsons-Guide-Landscape-Painting-Carlson/dp/0486229270 )

What he talks about in that book is how we can never replicate the full range of values or colors that exist in nature... the best we can do is have each patch of color on the canvas have a consistent relationship with the other patches. So, like, right now I'm working on a picture of a garage. I can't get the exact color I saw but I can make the shadowy areas darker and cooler (more blue) and the areas in sunlight lighter and warmer (more yellow). That way they are correct relative to each other. If you get the structure of the relationships right, then you won't have to worry about matching exactly. Let go of matching exactly and work on making things relatively correct.

Here's Stapleton Kearns on value in the landscape http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2013/10/confounding-color-and-value-in-landscape.html

Anyway, I'm rambling here, but I think this landscape is a really great start, keep going. My process has been, read some books and do some exercises, try a painting keeping one or two ideas in my head, repeat repeat repeat. It's been an incremental process for me. The main thing is the work and trying again and again.

You got this, have fun! :)

Youtube has some great stuff. Specifically, there are some Australian water color artists that are incredible and easy to relate to (just so your sources are broader than just Bob Ross). I currently have a teacher and she is helping me get to know materials and color theory a lot better. This stuff is super important. (I have been able to draw well enough for a while). Materials are tough to figure out without buying a bunch of stuff yourself. Color theory is much more than what I thought it was - found a good book that I hope will have all of the information I will need with some useful references. Here it is in a link below! My copy arrives soon! Taking a small class (less than 6 people or so with a teacher who takes a personal interest in your improvement) has benefits that I couldn't have realized in the beginning and struggle to quantify now. Also, I learn much quicker by instruction + solo work rather than just solo work. Leap frogging the time consuming question of "what colors should I start with and from what company on what type of surface" + bonus suggestions and free samples of other stuff by simply asking my teacher was most excellent. Paint where ever you are comfortable tho - sounds like you are on the right track!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1931780196/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Canvas boards are cheaper than box canvas and are a good place to start.

Acrylics are not as scary as you think. They dry faster than oil, of course, but you can experiment with things like stroke texture and thicker layering (impasto).

One method for creating abstraction that you may enjoy that will help you learn technique is taking an image and zooming so far in that all you recognize are shapes and color. No one else will know what the zoomed out image is but you. :)

Also check out this book:

Harley Brown’s Eternal Truths for Every Artist

It’s funny, accessible, comprehensive. Like having a sassy older mentor artist hanging out with you while you work.

Best of luck to you in your artistic adventures.

I would recommend Color Choices by Stephen Quiller when it comes to color theory. The book is relatively inexpensive but Stephen is one of my favorite color masters.

I second both books posted by Sykirobme.

The first one I got was Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings and it was great for someone like me who have zero background on drawing and painting. Started out slow and super basic and I noticed myself putting more and more effort as I went along the projects.

Then I got Acrylics for the Absolute Beginner, a landscape instructional, which was fun to follow and I learned a lot. I kept getting "you painted that?" reactions lol very encouraging and I have to make clear the paintings were not originals and I followed tutorials from a book.

I purchased Painting in Acrylics: The Indispensable Guide as a reference for tools/theory/techniques. And I like it so far but haven't read in depth because I keep getting distracted by other books I find at the library and attempting some originals.

I hope that's helpful. Also, reiterating that this is from the perspective of a beginner (5 months in!). Folks with more experience might have different/better suggestions. Happy painting!

http://www.arc-store.com/bovica.html literally anything from here will teach you sort of the classical approach, but is pricey.

https://streamlineartvideo.com/ same thing for this, I have the Cesar Santos DVDs (about $200 each), and they're about 20 plus hours, start to finish, every step on how to create something.

Human Figure Book\ literally probably the best book you can get for drawing the figure

Alla Prima Book everything you need to know about oil painting

https://guidetooilpainting.com/ great website to learn the basics

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It's a lot of practice, now I do watercolor paintings myself, but for oil paintings this is a great list of resources. It all kinda goes the same, you lay down and image and put the correct colors in the correct spots. I would say take more time with your drawing phase and the painting phase will be easier, but some like to go in w/ just a brush and attack it. Try things, suck for awhile and learn from it. I"m going to make a post about this to try and get some proper resources out there.

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Wow, thank you!

I work in a pretty traditional way, blocking out everything with flat color, then building things up in layers. The block-in is dry when I start working details...for this one I did a lot of glazing and wet-on-wet work - no retarder medium on this one, though I don't hesitate to use it when I need to do smooth blending in large areas, like a sky during sunrise - to build up the volume on the stones. In a couple places to get some colors and values right, I used glazing or gel mediums to add some transparency.

To get the colors to pop, I try to carefully select my palette. Some of those yellows are actually quite dull, but look brighter because of the colors they're next to. I try to coordinate my colors, paying attention to complements and temperature (the shadows, for example, are very warm, using a warm blue mixed with burnt sienna...that makes the lighter blue glow a bit more, plus it is a sort of purplish-black, which complements yellow and so makes that stand out, too). I also have learned that it's important to pay attention to the opacity of your pigments. It's easier to get the sharp edges using opaque colors as opposed to transparent ones.

The other thing to keep in mind with edges: it's easier to make defined edges using contrast.

Sometimes for lightening colors, I will use a zinc white or unbleached titanium as opposed to titanium white. Titanium white can pastel-ize your colors easily. Zinc white or unbleached titanium can lighten your values without washing out the hue. It'll make a red a light red as opposed to a pink, if you know what I mean.

For paints, I use full body acrylics. For this, most everything was done using Liquitex Heavy Body paints, but I have a lot of student-grade paints that I intermix freely: Liquitex Basics, Daler-Rowney System 3 (a very underrated brand, imo...avoid their Simply... line, but System 3 is great and inexpensive) and even some really cruddy ones I found at my local Ocean State Job Lots. I wanted to use the pro-quality stuff on this one because I was concerned with lightfastness...I'm pretty sure he's got UV lights on that aquarium and I didn't want anything to fade.

Hope that helps! And thank you again. I'm humbled that you like my work.

ETA: My favorite books on the technical aspects of painting (so far) have been Painting in Acrylics: The Indispensible Guide by Lorena Kloosterboer and How to Paint Fast, Loose and Bold by Patty Mollica. Both of them have lots of information on color mixing and value, and I'm still working my way through applying the lessons I've learned from them.

Further edit: for what it's worth, I've never been able to use oils effectively at all. Acrylics are just a medium that speaks to me more...I might be coming to you for tips one day if I try to use oils again!

Edit3: I have a process pic gallery here to give you an idea how I did this one: https://imgur.com/a/yn1EiUZ

Neat! Thanks. I just bought this book and it's been a great help, but it tends towards expressionism. I will get that book. The problem I have with coloring from sight is creating color harmony and rhythm. Maybe this will help with that.

I have this book, although I havent personally read through it since I'm preoccupied with school, I saw the book has still life practices, with step by step progress and direction, different paint mediums and materials, and the things you should know specific to each individually, brushes, techniques, how the paint acts/drys, etc.. As well it teaches how to mix paint colours, which is really important. Its definitely a great resource to introduce her to painting.

Here is a tip for those who want a new approach to using 3D impasto texture in their work that is entirely acrylics...

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Use:

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2. Thick Paint
   
3. Separate Drying Layer than the Canvas
   
   The separate drying layer enables you to PEEL & PLACE the dried paint before committing the arrangement down to the painting.
   
   Learn where to get thick paint in bulk for cheap.
   
   You do not need to own a Kindle to read. Download the Kindle app to whatever device you want. Read on your PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet, iPad, or Kindle device.
   
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I found this book (https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Paint-Watercolor-50-Paintings/dp/1631592777) which seems to be along the same lines that I was looking for. Planning to borrow it from the library and give it a shot. Will update the thread if this book was useful.

Check this out. You can browse some of it online, and your library might have a copy.

http://www.amazon.com/Paint-Effects-Timeless-Home-Achieving/dp/B008SM2KDW

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008XOF5K0/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511053949&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=a+potters+workbook is the only book you'll need to understanding how to throw.

I still don't know what I'm doing either, but I've been working through the super-accessible and helpful book "Learn to Paint Acrylics in 50 Small Paintings" by Mark Daniel Nelson: http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Paint-Acrylics-Small-Paintings/dp/1631590561

Robin Berry's Watercolor Secrets is a great book for getting started. Pictures, explanations, and step by step instructions for just about every watercolor technique you could imagine.

If you don't want to commit to artist quality materials, thats ok. Student grade paints (get the tube kind) and brushes are good for starting out, and you can always upgrade if you fall in love with watercolor.

But if nothing else, get good paper. Painting on bad paper like trying to paint a cute stencil on a wall full of scrapes, holes, and bumps. You could paint something great, but without a good base it will never look right. Arches 140 pound paper is amazing. It comes in sheets and blocks, so it can fit a range of budgets. Art Supply Warehouse can have some amazing deals if you hunt around.

PM me if you have any questions about materials or books.

[Watercolor Tricks & Techniques: 75 New and Classic Painting Secrets
]
(http://www.amazon.com/Watercolor-Tricks-Techniques-Classic-Painting/dp/160061308X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331616530&sr=1-6&tag=bookforyoudm-20)

Here you go

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hobbit-Sketchbook-Alan-Lee/dp/0008226741

https://www.amazon.ca/New-Acrylics-Complete-Generation-Acrylic/dp/0823031594/ref=asc_df_0823031594/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=292942809563&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13904807460932317148&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001425&hvtargid=pla-452997108388&psc=1

I found this book really helpful for explaining mediums and newer colours and what can be done with them. Also, the photography in it is fantastic.

I'm quite fond of the Quiller wheel. It's included with his excellent book, Color Choices, but can also be purchased separately.

http://www.amazon.com/Color-Choices-Making-Sense-Theory/dp/0823006972

Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory

Anything. Do it from observation. Best book on Landscape painting: http://www.amazon.ca/Carlsons-Guide-Landscape-Painting-Carlson/dp/0486229270

I can recommend you a good landscape painting book.

https://www.amazon.com/Carlsons-Guide-Landscape-Painting-Carlson/dp/0486229270

It's very text heavy and you may initially feel disappointed with the lack of "tutorialized" instruction. But this is one of the more useful books on landscapes I've ever read.

This is a very late reply, but this is the best book on painting I've ever read https://www.amazon.com/Hawthorne-Painting-Dover-Art-Instruction/dp/048620653X