cover image The New Creative Artist: A Guide to Developing Your Creative Spirit

The New Creative Artist: A Guide to Developing Your Creative Spirit

Nita Leland. North Light Books, $29.99 (175pp) ISBN 978-1-58180-756-1

As Sidaway has published more than 25 successful art books, any new book of his is worth a look. Here, he nearly pulls off what the title promises. Claims that these really are ""all the techniques"" an oil painter will need and that a ""complete beginner"" can learn oil painting in only ten steps are hyperbolic at best. However, Sidaway does give us a quick and broad survey of the techniques of composition, tonal underpainting, glazing, impasto, and the like. The true beginner would need a foundation in drawing before making good use of this book, and readers may want to go on to explore other techniques in oil, such as those in George Deem's How To Paint a Vermeer: A Painter's History of Art.