Master Strokes A Step-by-step Guide to Learning from the Masters. Pastel

ART INSTRUCTION This is a multi-title review. The titles include: ‘Master Strokes: Pastel’; unpg, and ‘Watercolor; A Step-by-Step Guide To Using the Techniques of the Masters’; 96pg. Harrison has created two unique and exciting books based on the methods of the masters. It may seem odd at first to study an oil by Courbet to learn pastel techniques or an oil by Gainsborough to learn the art of watercolor portraiture, but it works beautifully. The core of each book focuses in detail on a series of master paintings, each chosen to illustrate a specific subject area, such as portraiture, still life, or landscape. Each is followed by a tutorial in which a contemporary artist demonstrates not how to copy the original but how to use specific techniques to create a new work. Thus, the point of analyzing Winslow Homer’s ‘The Red Canoe’ is to learn how to paint figures in a landscape in one’s own work. These two books should be added to most collections to complement Ettore Maiotti’s earlier fine volume, The Oil Painting Handbook: Learning from the Masters, now out of print.-