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Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting | PDF | 245.82MB | FS-DF
193 pages | Publisher: Stove Prairie Press (2004) | Language: English
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1 comment:
I can hardly praise this book enough. It is full of experience and concrete knowledge.
The text is made of 10 chapters, plus an introduction:
1. Good ideas and free advice
2. Direct painting
3. Starting
4. Drawing
5. Values
6. Edges
7. Color and light
8. Composition
9. Technique
10. The magic
It has 193 pages, and is full of Schmid's paintings, almost all of them oils.
WHAT THIS BOOK TEACHES YOU:
It teaches you how to OBSERVE 3-D REALITY AND TRANSLATE IT ON A FLAT SURFACE AS DIRECTLY AS YOU CAN. The way of achieving it is to paint LIGHT ITSELF (what you see), not the very object with descriptive minutiae (what you know). Meticulous and painstaking painting tends to be naive in most hands.
Schmid asks you to clear up your mind and trust your instinct. THE HOW BECOMES OBVIOUS ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND THE WHAT AND THE WHY.
Some of his most insistent advices are: keep it SIMPLE; don't overwork; don't use ostentatious techniques; don't make random guessing brushstrokes; do a minimum of trial and error (correction wastes time); rather be BOLD than shy, but do it without hurrying and without any thoughtless bravado. Also, EXCESSIVE BLENDING IS LIKE MUMBLING WHEN YOU SPEAK.
He teaches you that, as you start, you sholud focus on one specific problem. Set a GOAL and do it in the time available. Limiting your time helps to SIMPLIFY your works. Simplify values by SQUINTING. If edges remain sharp when you squint, paint them sharp; if they go fuzzy, paint them fuzzy. Trust your squinting.
Schmid insists on the fact that, unlike common belief, most mistakes happen with drawing, not with colour. He says there is no comprehensive colour law; but there's something close to it: COOL LIGHT PRODUCES WARM SHADOWS, AND WARM LIGHT PRODUCES COOL SHADOWS. His palette has as many as 12 colours, not one more, because more than that is unnecessary (and often, the fewer colours, the better), as we can see in the colour charts--a perfect way of mixing all colours with one another until exhausting all possible combinations of two colours plus white. (Besides, don't overmix too many colours, or else you'll obtain MUD colour.)
He recommends: Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Yellow Ochre Light, Cadmium Red, Terra Rosa, Alizarin Crimson, Transparent Oxide Red, Viridian, Cobalt Blue Light, Ultramarine Blue Deep, Titanium White. There is no black, since he uses different mixtures of browns or reds with blue for getting a substitute for black.
He says what good lighting is for painting.
His ideas about colour harmony and composition are very down-to-earth and full of common sense. No mystic babblings or over-intelectualized theories.
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