The Oil Painter's Color Handbook: A Contemporary Guide to Color Mixing, Pigments, Palettes, and Harmony

This is one of the most valuable and readable art books I've purchased! Invaluable for understanding all aspects of color and color mixing from a practical perspective. It had excellent illustration and imagery to accompany the concepts. It's one of the few art books I've actually read cover-to-cover. It has some overlap with Schmid's Alla Prima, particularly in the guidance to create color references and charts, but with a twist and greater explanation and guidance. It's also liberally peppered with original art by the author to complement the text, but also other magnificent paintings by many others as well. However it is not a substitute for Alla prima - which is a more general text and delves much more into many other aspects of painting impressionistic realism but less into color and color theory.

In my over 40 years of oil painting experience theirs a couple of things I have learned about Art books...One... if you can't put it in a visual format why write it? Most Artist will absorb information via visual pictorial example... that means lots of pictures...Because Artist are Artist...who's business is the business of making pictures...it only makes logical since to use that medium to communicate with them...This book does just that... plenty of pictorial examples to fully explain this complex subject matter...Secondy is why publish a book explaining color that is printed only in black and white?yes... I have seen many books over the years who attempted to do just that...This book is filled with full color examples of master works related to the written explanation of why that particular Artist use of color and pallet was important...plus... there are over whelming full color schematics of the various color pallets used by the old masters and some modern masters as well... the book covers into color theory extensively enough to explain why what we learned in elementary school about color is simply wrong... explaining how there are different color gamuts of light, pigment, the printing process, computer monitors etc... and these all have to be taken into account as an oil painter in the modern world...having studied and practiced oil painting for many years not everything is covered... however I was pleasantly surprised just how comprehensive this book covered the subject...This is a serious Art book for the serious Oil Painter who wants to learn the craft with a most up to date study on the subject...

This is the second book I’ve purchased by this author, and would consider buying a third if he found a topic that he felt he could study and report on as extensively as he has in his first two. I am almost shocked by the depth of detail he provides on the topics he’s chosen to write about. My thirst for knowledge about painting is great but his commitment to provide extensive consideration and research on the topic of color in this book is so great that I will need frequent visits to the book for reference before I can digest the entity of it’s offering. Thank him for his commitment to teach us what we crave to understand. The humility and willingness to work beyond what has been done before makes his books great.

This was a great book to learn more about mixing color for painting. Nice hard cover book with quality pages.I read through the book in less than a week cause I didn't want to put it down. The first few chapters were a bit more about color history and some things that I already knew, but once you get to chapter 5, it gets really good and had information I haven't seen presented anywhere else about color mixing.I'm not sure if this author has any other books out there, but would buy more if he did. There are a lot of nice photos throughout the book and great color wheels, especially helpful if you use Gamblin Oil paints since some of the detailed color wheels plot the gamblin pigments on the wheel and shows where they are in relation to all other colors in the paint line.I am probably going to go back through the book now that I finished it and write down all the highlights of great information into a notebook to keep near my easel.!

As the title reads, this is a color handbook. My opinion is that it goes beyond any other art book on color in my library. The pages are exactly as formatted in the preview, with all full color samples of painting to enhance the experience. This is a book to learn from, and also a reference you would use repeatedly. Chapters cover color theory, looking back in the past at color systems but also o current ideas. I lost track of how many color wheels are part of the presentation. Lots of them. Discussion on value and strings of color (arrays of value and hue). Since my passion is color — I work in watercolor and colored pencil — I find each page stunning. This is the high quality of a coffee table book, with fine glossy paper that beautifully reprodunes the colors, color wheels and paintings.

What a gorgeous book! The painting examples are well chosen, superbly printed, and inspirational.Todd Casey is an award winning, accomplished artist and teacher. This big book organizes well researched, simply explained, current information on many aspects of color for new and experienced oil painters. Well done ! His last book on Still life is exceptional and I can’t wait for his next addition.

'The Oil Painter's Color Handbook: A Contemporary Guide to Color Mixing, Pigments, Palettes, and Harmony' is a good guide for color mixing. Each topic is clearly explained in the text, and is also illustrated with captions, charts, diagrams, and finished paintings. This is one of the most comprehensive books on color theory for artists. It covers everything from understanding color relationships to how to use color wheels. It explains complex concepts and provides easy to understand answers.

Very helpful with wonderful paintings