John C. Pellew

Oil Painting Outdoors

Published by Watson-Guptill. softcover, illustrated



"Written in the clear, concise, and highly personal style of his two previous books on acrylic and watercolor painting, John Pellew's Oil Painting Outdoors adds another valuable contribution to the study of art."
—Henry Gasser, N.A., A.W.S.

"The author's years of experience in teaching and painting trom nature will be an inspiration to all students of landscape art."
—Tom Nicholas, N.A., A.W.S.

One of America's most famous landscape artists presents a step-by-step guide to outdoor painting in oils for students, professionals, and serious amateurswith special emphasis on how to work with the simplest equipment.

After a brief look at the techniques of "old masters" of landscape (such as Constable, Sargent, and Homer), Pellew describes all the needed suppliesfrom easels to painting surfaces and mediums. With the emphasis always on simplicity, he discusses the limited palette and how to set it, complementary colors, graying down a color, keeping leftover paint, and cleaning brushes.

When face to face with nature, careful observation is a skill that every aspiring landscapist must master. This subject is treated in a separate chapter, along with such others as using a viewfinder, learning to see values, using the "golden cut," and discovering the abstract pattern beneath a realistic landscape. A chapter is devoted to specific subjects common to landscapes—trees, grasses and weeds, houses and barns, and skies and clouds—and demonstrates how to paint them.

Leaving the typical waves-on-the-rocks seascape to the marine specialist, Pellew presents some alternative subjects when painting the shore: painting the beach, rock formations, sand dunes, salt marshes, lighthouses, and headlands. The author then devotes a chapter to painting in open country. Rendering water and reflections, painting rolling country, matching your color to the seasons, and observing nature are all treated with the author's informative and down-toearth style. Mountain painting, always a favorite—though complex—subject for painters, is discussed in terms of panoramas and closeups, complete with an outline of equipment best suited to the terrain.

After discussing the importance of drawing, the author shows how to paint from drawings, photographs, and memory, then advises the reader on various practical, everyday topics, ranging from dealing with onlookers to some do's and don'ts of landscape painting. A series of seven step-by-step demonstrations encompasses all the basic painting problems that the landscapist usually encounters. Throughout the book are superb reproductions of the author's paintings, with detailed analyses that describe not only the technique used, but also the author's devotion to nature—prerequisite for all landscape artists.

Watson-Guptill Publications, 1515 Broadway. New York, N.Y. 10036