Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Volume 2) (James Gurney Art)

I have bought quite a few art related books over the years and this one is honestly the most useful in my entire collection. I think every artist should have this book. I think this should be given out as textbooks to art students. It's just so dang useful! It is written in a very approachable manner and broken down into two-page spreads for each subject. There is no pretentious lecturing or pontificating like some art books. Just really useful information laid out in an easy to reference guidebook. GET IT!

I love this book! I've recommended it all my artistic friends. As a self-taught artist, I tend to collect a lot of art books, and this one has to be the best one I've received! It's incredible how easily I'm able to follow it. There's few technical terms, and their meanings are readily apparent. There's also no complicated formulas or theories that turn the two subjects, color and light, into an intellectual ramble. Every time I cover something new, I get giddy over how I understand it! However, this isn't a how-to book. There's no step-by-steps, or such. This isn't going to teach you how to paint. Rather, it'll teach you how to look at colors and lighting in such a way that you'll see things different, a new way that allows you to observe them properly. As with all learning books, you get as much as you put in. For example: On page 28 you are told, "On a clear day...the shadows are darker and bluer relative to the sun. As more clouds appear in the sky, shadows become grayer." Then, "The blue sky color gives the top of the shoulder a greenish quality in the shadow. Where the sleeve drops from the shoulder, the yellow shirt picks up warm colors from the ground and appears more orange." Going with the past section of how sunny days have blue shadows, it's like, 'Oh, that makes sense!' Then my mind immediately jumps to, 'Well, if the shadows are greenish on a yellow shirt, they'd be more violet on a red shirt, and possibly more lilac on a cloudy day.' I highly recommend Colors and Light, and it's so affordable, too! There's also a second book by this author,

This book did not disappoint, in fact it is one of the best books I have ever read so far. Art is a subjective process where you rely more on a hunch and instinct to get things looking good. To find an artist who is conscious enough to explain all the workings of color and light is not easy since it is like putting a formula to emotions.

Chapter 1 Tradition In the first chapter, the author wastes no time and delved right into how the great masters did it in their time with the limited pigments and how they made up for the limitations with skill.

Chapter 2 Sources of Light In the second chapter, the quick basics of light is briefly explored from direct sunlight to window light. In the later part of the chapter, James Gurney gives accurate descriptions on rare occasions where there is a hidden light source or light sources that emits from objects.

Chapter 3 Light and Form The third chapter covers all the lighting from each direction and all the various types of shadows.

Chapter 4 Elements of Color This is where it gets interesting. There are some articles and books on Color that are either too technical or too brief. In this chapter, we are introduced to the basics of color and there is a sub-page on the history of color wheels that is very enlightening. You must be thinking, "Color Wheels again.." but I can assure you that most of your questions about how the wheel came to be and other variations of the wheel is all covered here.

Chapter 5 Paint and Pigments After the introduction to color, we get right into traditional paint and pigments. Here, the techniques for color mixing and pallete arrangements are introduced. You can't help but feel that the author is being very generous with his knowledge really. He also briefly covered a warm underpainting in this chapter.

Chapter 6 Color Relationships The 6th chapter is a prelude to the coming chapter. It is basically a demonstration that color information changes depending on the adjacent colors that is placed next to that color. It is all about color relationships and how the warm and cool colors differs from each pallete.

Chapter 7 Premixing The core of the book lies in Chapter 7. It covers the all important color picking or in the traditional sense, premixing. It teaches the reader how to restrict their color pallete in order to create more harmony in a painting.

Chapter 7 Premixing In this chapter, gamut mapping and masks is covered with examples of how it would look like in an actual painting.

Chapter 8 Visual Perception Next, there are some exceptions when it comes to all the rules of colors and here it is covered in the Visual Perception chapter. Tricky situations like moonlight color and color constancy is covered in depth.

Chapter 9 Surfaces and Effects The final chapters are filled with techniques to render all other forms of effects like scattering, hair, caustics, motion blur and highlights.

Chapter 10 Atmospheric Effects Finally, the rest of the book covers all the atmospheric effects of sunlight and certain materials like snow, water, rivers and underwater. If you are expecting to be spoon fed with palletes and sure fire methods of handling color then you are mistaken. However, after going through this book, you will be armed with an understanding of color like never before

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Bear with me here... I have a background in music, I play guitar and know enough music theory that, while I'm not terribly good at it, I do feel like I can appreciate music in ways that others without a similar background cannot.

I'm 75% of the way through this book, and I feel like this book is giving me an equivalent set of tools to appreciate visual art. It's amazing. My hobby is miniature figure painting, and I was in deep, and this book has made it that much better. The brilliant bit is that I look at the world around me a see stuff in new ways all the time. Some things you need to practice, but a lot of this book is just pointing things out that you can observe all the time in the world around you.

So I'm very happy with this purchase. If you are or were an art major, maybe you don't need this book, but for us ignorant n00bs coming into an artistic hobby later in life, this book is great. The language is concise and to the point, with typically multiple excellent examples on every page spread. One has only to connect the words and the pictures and the concepts leap out.

I haven't found anything I don't like about this book. I suppose I could say that sometimes he only dips into certain concepts just to explain the part of that concept that backs up what he's trying to show you in the book. Additive vs. subtractive color mixing, for example - he explains additive but there doesn't appear to be an equivalent explanation of subtractive, or why it is called subtractive. My brain just wants to know these things! But this isn't a flaw, this is just something to note and follow up on later, which makes the learning experience, in my opinion, that much richer.