Books on Art

[Flowlen]

So, which are some of your favorite titles? Tell us about books that have kept your interest, be they fiction, biographies, instructive manuals, or whatever else related to art.

I have realized that my bookshelves are dreadfully poor on that subject. Help me remedy that!

[Amit Dutta]

A brief list that I always go back to again and again :

Alla Prima - Richard Schmid (general painting approach / plein air)
Color and light - James Gurney (everything on painting realism)
Framed Ink - Marcos Mateu-Mestre (composition / comics / storyboards)
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott Mccloud (comics)
The Skillful Huntsman - Design Studio Press (concept design)
Carlson's guide to landscape painting - John F Carlson (Traditional landscape painting)
Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking - David Bayles and Ted Orland (mental approaches to art)
Eat that Frog - Brian Tracy (the best and simplest way to beat procrastination, incredibly useful even though not art specific)
Loomis books are generally all pretty good.
Sargent Notes (This one is a free pdf of notes from a student of his floating about on the internet, that I find very insightful about his approach, and love rereading)

Blogs I always go back to
Stapleton Kearns (not updated so much, but lots of very useful analysis in the archives)
Muddycolors
Gurney Journey

There are a ton of anatomy books, that I won't bother mentioning, someone else can do that :)

[Bookend]

To start with, for beginners, Betty Edward's 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' is pretty good general material, and great exercises to practice.

For Anatomy: George Bridgman, Burne Hogarth (For the really exaggerated stuff), Michael Hampton, Andrew Loomis and... I want to say Jeno Barcsay's little book on anatomy, but I haven't taken a look at it since I've gotten better. I've been looking for it forever since I forgot the author's name, and just found it again recently and signed it out. Will be picking it up on Wednesday, so I can provide updates on that.

There's also an anatomy atlas by Sarah Simble if you want really a specific, and thorough breakdown.

'Techniques of the Great Masters' has always had rave reviews-- I haven't gotten around to reading it myself though: http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Great-M...0890098794

And for a book -about- art, I've heard a lot about, "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri.

Also, I think Jan (?) recommended "How to Render," By Scott Robertson to me, which I'm still planning to check out.

[Sloane]

Does anybody know any good source for sketches of the old Masters (Michaelangelo, Raphael etc)? I have found some catalogues online but they're nasty black and white copies.