A lot of artists either pass through a phase, or even spend a lifetime, obsessed with pigment. Not me, I'm a brush woman! This technical book will help you understand an aspect of painting that I think gets neglected.
Brushes
A Handbook for Artists and Artisans
Jacques Turner
Design Books, 1992
Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece is quiet book in which the drama of a great story slowly unfolds. He brings alive the passion some people feel for art, and the romance of Italy, Caravaggio and history.
The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggion Masterpiece
Jonathan Harr
Random House, 2006
There is something about E.H. Gombrich's "voice," it is such a delight to spend time with. A Little History of the World is the first book Gombrich wrote. It's a history book for children which he wrote while finishing his doctoral thesis in art history. The book was an immediate success and was translated into several languages--except for English. Gombrich insisted on doing the English translation himself. Well, he got a little busy, and the translation, and revision, became the last project of his life; he was working on it when he died, at 92.
My son read the book when he was ten years old, and I picked it up and could simply not put it down. An incredible pleasure to read.
A Little History of the World
E.H. Gombrich
Yale University Press, 2005
Art and Illusion: The Psychology of Pictorial Representation
E.H. Gombrich
2nd Ed., Pantheon Books, 1965
Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing
Margaret Livingstone
Harry N. Abrams, 2002
Velazquez: The Technique of Genius
Jonathan Brown, Carmen Garrido
Yale University Press, 1998
Examining Velazquez
Gridley McKim-Smith, Greta Andersen-Bergdoll, Richard Newman
Yale University Press, 1988
Goya
Robert Hughes
Knopf, 2003
