I bought this book for a buck earlier this month, and I had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks to browse it over a couple of football games that I watched parts of because I’ve been disappointed in the Packers’ play this year.
As I alluded to in the Good Book Hunting post, this book is part project book and part catalogue.
As it’s published by the parent company of Writers’ Digest, which also has a number of other art and crafts magazines in its stable, this book has a number of art project discussions of how to make the painted objects, including the colors on the palette and brush stroke techniques to mirror the project originally painted by the artist. I learned how you build up from the background with basic colors and shapes and then add lines, shading, and highlighting to give the actual depth. This is a lot different from the flat way I did painting when I was in school and trying to get extra credit in my art classes, but I wasn’t doing it like Bob Ross told me to even then.
Then we get into some items in the Decorative Arts Collection, which is a 25-year-old (then) club/consortium of decorative painters that got together to promote and to collect historical art of the stripe. Well, not stripe: It’s painting flowers and walking men on various practical articles to tart them up a bit. A lot of painting on tin, a little less kitchy than pure folk/country art, but along those lines.
Prettier to look at than, say, Matisse but with a little less depth than real Art. But still, pleasant to look at, and certainly not something I could do.