Lessons In Classical Painting:  Essential Techniques From Inside The Atilier, by Juliette Aristides

[Note:  This book was provided free of charge by Blogging For Books/Waton-Guptil Publications in exchange for an honest review.]

Admittedly, I am not the ideal audience for this book in at least one major respect, for although I greatly enjoy art and art history and art criticism [1], my own skills in visual media like painting are nearly non-existent.  That said, this book is a fantastic piece of educational writing from an artist for those who wish to practice the sort of art education that comes from learning in an atelier, or studio, although they lack a master to train them.  Even for those who are not artists, though, this book has a lot to offer, largely because it happens to be written from the approach of someone who struggled at art, and who has a deep belief in the spiritual nature of art, all of which makes for a compelling book that is of interest to readers even if their own interest in art is marginal at best.  Besides this, the book is full of intriguing quotes that are immensely thought-provoking and that apply far outside of the art world as well.

The contents of this book are focused, as would be expected on the practical side of art.  There are four chapters to the book, each of them focusing on a different aspect of art:  learning the importance of gray in value patterns, using form painting to combine the senses of touch and sight, using temperature to unlock the secrets of color, and using the palette of nature to master the nature of color.  Included among these chapters, which total slightly more than 200 pages of writing, there are lessons on making value posters, creating tonal underpaintings, doing value sphere painting, practicing form painting, doing a warm and cool painting, practicing limited palette portrait painting, mastering trompe l’oeil, doing a master copy of a masterpiece, painting a full-chroma object, doing a still-life floral painting with a color wash underpainting, and doing figure painting from life.  The eleven lessons are meant to mimic the year-long education that would normally be undertaken by an artist in a studio as an apprentice painter.

This book manages a very difficult task.  It manages to be an intensely practical work from a master painter who struggled to master her art and who therefore has great insight for others who are struggling as well.  Yet her advice is practical far outside of art, and her quotes are quite thought-provoking and intriguing as well.  Likewise, she is a firm believer in the spiritual nature of art and in the beauty of creation, but also whose love of beauty and spirituality does not contradict in any way a firm appreciation of either the male or nude female form, of which there are plenty, in various stages of glory, to be found in artistic works in this book.  Not only does the book feature very technical text about the practice of painting–and the author is firm in her belief in the importance of practicing over and over again different aspects of painting in order to master art–but it also features a large number of paintings, some of them famous and some obscure, that have something to offer the reader interested in exploring nuance and ambiguity and the large number of answers to the same deep questions about art, about what is and what should be, and about how we are to better understand and appreciate the world outside and inside of us.  This is a book of value not only with regards to art, but with regards to life as well, and that is a considerable achievement.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/15/book-review-the-world-of-art/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/book-review-the-parthenon-code-mankinds-history-in-marble/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/non-book-review-arthurian-animation/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/28/audiobook-review-the-monuments-men/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/01/the-number-seventy-two/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/book-review-the-return-of-the-prodigal-son/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/book-review-lit-by-the-sun/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/petr-xpi-me-fecit/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/we-are-the-landscape-of-all-we-know/