Reviews for Artist's Photo Reference - Reflections, Textures & Backgrounds

The average rating for Artist's Photo Reference - Reflections, Textures & Backgrounds based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-10-11 00:00:00 Milo Milic From Amazon, April 29, 2000: Excellent Chinese brush painting book! This is one of the best books about Chinese painting for those who want to understand not just Chinese painting techniques, but also something of the history and variety of traditional Chinese brush painting. The one drawback is the usage of the outdated Wade-Giles romanization (the book was first published in 1962), but that is merely a trivial annoyance compared to the wealth of information the author provides. Most instructional painting books are written by painters who focus on their own style, and give no credit to all the masters who have gone before them. This book shows many examples of paintings by master painters (ancient and modern), along with examples from the author's own teacher, master painter P'u Ch'uan. He thoroughly describes the different painting styles, with excellent examples, and many bibliographical references. I especially liked the fact that he gave 7 different versions of translations of "the Six Principles" of Hsieh Ho; by combining the common threads in all of them, their real meaning becomes clearer. Another subject he talks about, although briefly, is the importance of understanding brush strokes in order to be better prepared to deal with forgeries and copies. This subject is almost universally ignored in books on Chinese painting, and yet it is very important. I have seen a painting in a catalog from one of the big auction houses that on first glance looked like another one of Li Ke-ran's many water buffalo paintings, and was attributed to him by the (anonymous) seller. Upon closer scrutiny of the brush strokes used, it was obviously a fake. And I am by no means a true expert. If you are a beginner with no teacher to help you, then you will probably need other books, too. But for anyone who wants to learn about the history and traditions of Chinese painting, this is the ideal book.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-31 00:00:00 Tom Sirotnak A sentence in the author's concluding remarks warns us, "While a knowledge of painting techniques may not always be prerequisite in judging a Western work of art, it is absolutely indispensable for the Westerner who wants to understand Eastern art" (p. 313). Way of the Brush launches one on the way--it introduces the most basic concepts of Chinese brush art often using the pairing of Chinese paintings to contrast one technique or style against another, along the way teaching the basic vocabulary of Chinese art critics (note, not necessarily the artists themselves). For example, in subject matter, the pairings of mountain and water (shansui), people and things (renwu), animal paintings or 'feather and fur' (lingmao), etc. This is a larger, denser, and more demanding work than other introductions to the topic (for example, Jerome Silbergeld's Chinese Painting Style: Media, Methods, and Principles of Form) and some readers may find the frequent references to Japanese art--an area author Van Briessen knows exceedingly well--extraneous or even peripheral. However, do not let that dissuade you from investing the time (and the thought) laying the groundwork. It's a slow slog, and I personally found the sections on 'shaping lines' hard going, but it all came together later when the idea of 'dragon veins' (longmo) or 'connectives' is introduced and the idea of 'host and guest', or how an artist can 'have ink' or 'have brush' or even at the best of times, both. Since I began the study of Chinese when Wade-Giles was shifting to Pinyin, I found the use of Wade-Giles only slightly troublesome; for those who weren't schooled in both transcription systems, be sure to download a WG-Pinyin cheat sheet to ease your way as the examples van Briessen has chosen represent many of the best painters of their periods and not learning their names along with their styles would be to squander half of the value of The Way of the Brush. This is a book to read, then spend some months looking at Chinese paintings close-up, first hand, before returning to another read before returning again and again and again, each time with more knowing eyes.