

I am a professional landscape painter.I make my living painting pictures. Jame's last book was a New York Times best seller in the art instruction category and this one will probably be too. Or you can get it from Amazon or your local bookseller. You can get a copy, signed if you like from Jim himself Here. It is easy and fun to read and will equip you to deal with the problems of color in your painting and cheerfully explain the reasons why things look the way they do, all without being hard to read or tedious. I think this is one of those books an aspiring painter needs. He also shows photographs of light effects the painter will encounter when painting skies, reflections, sunsets, and is an explanatory photo about the color in skies for instance.īelow is a you-tube flip through of the book. This book is filled with plates of his own works, the masters, great illustrators and the academics of the 19 th century. Here is an example of one of his paintings that he uses to explain multiple light sources for instance.

He also has an insatiable curiosity that leads him into all sorts of research on the "why" of the things that we painters wrestle with. That friends, is an amazing tour de force. That image should be clickable, click it and stare. I don't think I know of anybody today who draws better. I have little interest in fantasy literature, but Gurneys drawing skills and his amazing abilities put him in a class all by himself. He has worked for National Geographic, done book covers and published the wildly successful series of Dinotopia books that have been translated into about 2,900 different languages except that weird one with the clicks in it. James Gurney is an illustrator and does mostly science fiction or fantasy work. James has really sorted it out from a painters perspective AND explained the science of color too. Most books I have read on color are hard to understand and harder still to apply to your art. This book is like nothing written on color before. I have to tell you you MUST get this book. I received my copy of Color and Light today from Jim Gurney.
