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 Location:  Home » Watercolor » First Steps Painting Acrylics (First Step Series)January 9, 2009  
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First Steps Painting Acrylics (First Step Series)
First Steps Painting Acrylics (First Step Series)
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Author: Vicki Lord
Publisher: North Light Books
Category: Book

List Price: $18.99
Buy New: $4.99
You Save: $14.00 (74%)
Buy New/Used from $4.99

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars(6 reviews)
Sales Rank: 80484

Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 10.6 x 8.4 x 0.4

ISBN: 0891346686
Dewey Decimal Number: 751.426
EAN: 9780891346685
ASIN: 0891346686

Publication Date: August 15, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
The absolute beginner's first strokes in acrylic can now be fun and rewarding. First Steps offers friendly instruction that is clear, simple and encouraging.


Customer Reviews:   Read 1 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars Good start book   August 17, 2008
  1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I like this instructional book very much. It has a lot of information about the products needed to paint with acrylics and good ideas too. I just wish I had more time to use the book! I'm soon starting a new art class, Life Drawing. Perhaps I will be able to use some of my new knowledge to create a masterpiece!


3 out of 5 stars More like 2nd or 3rd steps   January 29, 2008
  7 out of 8 found this review helpful

This book like so many so-called beginner's acrylics books follows the usual pattern: a chapter on materials (this book's section is rather sketchy) and then an immediate huge jump into technique. Right after the sketchy materials section the author devotes a chapter on composition before getting into technique. The technique chapter is not very helpful; it shows you a catalog of the results of various techniques but provides no real help in how to achieve them. On the plus side the paintings shown (and there are lots of them) are appealing to me; however, I after reading the book I wouldn't have the slightest chance of even making a faint resemblance of them.

As my growing collection of unsatisfactory "beginner's" acrylics shows (the nearest big bookstore is almost three hours away) there is a huge difference between a gifted artist and a gifted art teacher, though in fairness what is probably lacking are gifted art instruction authors. When writing these books they apparently don't have any reader feedback (why not?) who could slow them down by asking questions like how do I thin the paint, how thing should it be, what's the best way to mix colors, how do I clean the brushes, how do I keep the paint from drying out on my palette or my painting, etc., etc., etc.

The only painting book I've found so far which can truly claim to be a beginner's book is Jack Reid's "Watercolor Basics: Let's Get Started". That book is full of exercise paintings that let the reader learn a technique on a simple painting; the paintings are simple enough so that the beginner doesn't get lost in the detail yet have some artistic character.



4 out of 5 stars Painting Acrylics   January 8, 2008
I love this book. It is very good for the beginner-----and I mean for someone who has never picked up a brush. I have really enjoyed it.


5 out of 5 stars Good info   October 17, 2007
I purchased three books about acrylic painting and find this book to have the best instruction and information of the three. I would reccommend this book.


3 out of 5 stars Not very satisfying   June 8, 2006
  6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Not a lot of information in this book (i.e. 'tiny lines must be drawn with an inky or soupy like substance'. However the book does not tells you how to get this substance. Water, a medium or what and how much?).

Much book space has been spent on showing paintings.