Landscape Painting
With nearly 50,000 copies in print, Landscape Painting has been the best selling landscape painting book in the U.S. for 10 years running. The book has been called “a new classic of landscape art” (Katherine Tyrell, Making a Mark) and has graced the bookshelves at museums like The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The National Gallery, the Seattle Art Museum, and in Europe at the Tate Gallery in London, the Scotland National Gallery, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. A Chinese language edition was published in 2017.
Overview
“Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice” is a comprehensive, genre-specific guide that focuses on the greatest challenges facing the landscape painter:
• Simplification and Massing: Learn to reduce nature’s complexity by looking beneath the surface of a subject to discover the form’s basic masses and shapes.
• Color and Light: Explore color theory as it specifically applies to landscape painting and learn the various strategies painters use to capture the illusion of natural light.
• Selection and Composition: Learn how to compose with a limited focus and how to find the essential cues necessary to build an illusion of depth within your paintings.
The book’s essential lessons are drawn from the author’s 30 years of landscape painting experience and methods proven successful in his workshops held over the past 25 years at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, Pacific Northwest Art School, Daniel Smith Artist’s Materials, Dakota Art, Winslow Art, and several painting adventures in Italy. The book is richly illustrated with 230 diagrams, photographs, step-by-step demonstrations, and over 40 contemporary and classic paintings. Clearly written, practical, and inspirational this book is a serious companion for anyone getting started in the genre, as well as instructors or more experienced painters who want to improve their skills and explore new perspectives.
“Absolutely the finest book I’ve ever read on landscape painting! That list includes Edgar Payne, Andrew Loomis, John Carlson and Birge Harrison. Yours is better than all of them.” – Don Demers
“Albala strikes a position distilling the didactic forcefulness of Carlson and marries it to a humanist liberal arts tradition.” – Dinah Snipes Steveni
“This glorious practical book will soon have you pining for the great outdoors, come rain, shine or even blizzard. As a seasoned landscape artist, American author Mitchell Albala sees his subject both as a constant challenge and an alluring prospect. Every aspect of landscape painting is picked apart with neat observations, while his enthusiasm keeps things brisk and interesting — unusually for a practical book, this is a real page turner … So whether you are a seasoned view painter or an inquisitive novice looking for a change of subject, this is a beautiful, must-have guide.” – Artists & Illustrators Magazine
“If you’re a landscape painter and you want a book that takes you as seriously as you take your subject, look no further.” – ArtBookReview.net
