Rating: 
Summary: This book is a treasure.
Review: This book contains a wealth of knowledge about soft pastels, and their cousins the oil pastels, oil bars and other specialties and are used traditionally and with modern techniques in the book. It is a must buy. It opens a new world to what you can do with those pigments and mediums. The paintings are beautiful. It is comprehensively composed and illustrated.
I regard the book cover design and title as generic in promoting what is inside. It needs to be redesigned to show the range of content. I think this book was ineffectively marketed and has not reached its full audience.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely through, great reference
Review: This is a wonderfully complete book covering all aspects of pastel painting. It is useful for both the beginner who needs to understand the medium and the experienced artist who needs a ready reference to a multitude of materials and techniques as well as a source of inspiration.The book starts out with a very thorough overview of materials, spanning about 30 pages, with lots of pictures as well as descriptions of soft, oil and handmade pastel types with a detailed analysis by brand. Oil sticks, numerous paper types, mediums and tools are also included. Basic pastel techniques are covered next including sketching, and pastel painting concepts such as liner, blocking-in, and atmosphere. Making corrections and the role of fixatives is also included. Then, you learn to create pastel textures by scumbling and dusting as well as by adding pencil or using fixative. A comprehensive section on color theory follows, including an explanation of the color wheel and using metallic/iridescent colors. There are demonstrations on achieving transparency and using different paper colors. Numerous other techniques follow, showing you how to use pastels with other media such as watercolors, acrylics, modeling pastes, oils and gum tragacanth. The unique characteristics of oil pastels and oil sticks are given special treatment as well. A list of quality suppliers as well as an index for easy reference are included in the back. This is definitely a must have for any pastel artist.
Rating:
Summary: comprehensive
Review: What is unique about this book is its strong treatment of pastel color and blending methods. Also the treatment of pastel usage with other mediums like acrylics, modeling paste, alkyg gels, oil paint, oil pastels. I personally did not know that pastels could be combined with so many mediums, and the texture outcomes are amazing and even unique. Author- Creative Painting For The Young Artist.
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