(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best painting books

Rick Surowicz’s YouTube channel is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_RHSK_GEIoVTF-QNKDRvgA

I recommend his podia “Rocks and Water” was worth every penny: https://ricksurowicz.podia.com/rocks-and-water

Joseph Zbukvic’s book is amazing. It’s out of print, but you can find a pdf here: https://archive.org/details/ZbukvicCompressed

Ron Hazell’s Book Painting Water in Watercolor is a great resource for painting water: The Artist's Guide To Painting Water In Watercolor: 30+ Techniques https://www.amazon.com/dp/144033725X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_1QpCDb00QVENB

Liron Yancosky’s YouTube is really good: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChJff_wMy_bByb0jFTfw0xw

I love Tim Wilmot’s videos as well because he explains so well as he goes: https://www.youtube.com/user/timwilmot

Stan Miller hasn’t updated in a while, but his videos are really helpful: https://www.youtube.com/user/Stanleylestermiller

conceptart.org has some good stuff, they make DVDs too. You could probably pirate them, were you a person of low moral fiber.

There are some good books out there too, which you can probably get from the local library. You might need to use interlibrary loan though, my local libraries have a poor selection of art books, but there isn't anything they haven't been able to find at another library.

Color in Contemporary Painting

The Art of Color

Mastering Composition

Abstraction in Art and Nature

The Art Spirit

Some people don't care about theory, but personally I find it inspiring. Art in Theory 1900-1990 is a good collection of writings by artists, critics, and the like. If you're weak on art history you might want to study some of that first, History of Modern Art is pretty good.

Watercolors are fun to play with, and cheap. They work well for painting lakes, gives the whole thing a rather dream-like quality.

A friend of mine gave me this. It's a ton of fun, totally recommend it. A used one probably won't have the ink set still, and maybe not the brushes either, but it'd be cheaper to get the used book and then tack on an ink/brush set. If you're interested in that kind of thing.

A wet palette will definitely help increase the paint's working life. Another option is to use some sort of blending medium for acrylic paint. They are usually a drying retarder and can double the working life of the paint.

When working with acrylic paint, you've got to work fairly quickly or in small areas otherwise the paint starts to set. Don't put too much on your brush, and clean the brush fairly often to prevent it gumming up.

The other option is to use artists oil paints - they have tremendous color range, dry very slowly and are available in formulations that allow water cleanup. The studio set of 10 is probably all you need to get started. With that and a color mixing guide you'll be set.

Ever heard of Feng Zhu? He has a YouTube channel where he gives tips and techniques for practicing environment design, also covers a wide range of concept art related stuff, you can also learn from some of the student works at the fzd-school website.

I'm still in search of better resources that are dedicated to learning environment art as well, I've heard https://www.amazon.com/Composition-Outdoor-Painting-Edgar-Payne/dp/0939370115
Is good place to start

No answer to your question and I'm not OP, but if you're just getting into watercolor I recommend the book Watercolor Painting by Tom Hoffmann. It's the best watercolor book I've ever seen by leaps and bounds.

Still photography and painting employ techniques that work very well in images that don't move, while motion pictures have another set of techniques that work in pictures that do move--because you always have to shoot with the mindset that a moving image is seen in context with other moving images, and not on its own. These techniques overlap considerably.

I'm seeing a lot of still photography and painting composition techniques creeping into motion work, particularly in regard to the use of negative space.

Painting books put a lot of emphasis on drawing the eye to a spot in the painting and then giving it a path to follow around the image and back to the original spot, so if you want to learn how to guide a viewer through an image then books on painting help considerably.

This is the best painting book I've read that spells things out simply and succinctly.

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
   
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   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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http://www.amazon.com/Brushwork-Essentials-Mark-Christopher-Weber/dp/1440306745
this book goes into detail about loading your brush, cleaning it and various types of brush strokes.. I saw a pdf version when i googled it. otherwise, your painting is pretty good for just starting in oils

https://www.amazon.com/Paint-Number-Kit-Everything-Masterpieces/dp/0811847888.

They are old painting kits you could buy with the drawing filled with spaces that had numbers. The numbers corresponded to the paints that were included in the kit. It was lots of fun for kids and could be bought in many souvenir shops.

In my picture, the real background looks like one of these finished paintings.

That is the back of the Secrets of the Enchanted Forest coloring book. :)

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This book is the best studio reference I've ever owned.

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 haven't surveyed what else is out there, but Art School: A Complete Painter's Course (amazon link) was good enough for me. It also has sections on acrylic and oil painting. From what I remember it does not have any human figures.

this one. it's pretty interesting because the pages are really large and she breaks down each texture approach in 3-4 steps so you can paint along if you want. i've been unhappy with my own approach to trees lately and i wanted to try some different things.

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.

I would recommend any combinations of the following items:

[Cotman Watercolor pan set] (http://www.dickblick.com/items/00337-1059/) maybe with an extra brush as the one included is teeny.

Copic Multiliner Pen Set

The Art of Urban Sketching

100 Things Every Artist Should Know

Souce (Pfft): Art courses and worked in an art supply store for 5 years

I got a book a few semesters into taking and found it helpful for a lot of what I did in class. It has instructions for skills of all levels and each skill had an accompanying project to practice with. It has handbuilding and throwing projects.

http://www.amazon.com/Potters-Complete-Studio-Handbook--Finish/dp/1592537464/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452727515&sr=8-1&keywords=potters+complete+studio+handbook

I was really into that book until i found another book that was almost exactly the same book from 10 years earlier. Kind made me mad that whole pages and illustration styles got pretty much ripped word for word. Now I endorse https://www.amazon.com/Very-New-Orleans-Celebration-History/dp/1565124472/ref=asc_df_1565124472/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312030722538&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1713530055378017151&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-523850450627&psc=1
Im not sure if emma fick was aware of this book, but there are some glaring similarities

Here you go

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