Paint Books

This book explains in detail how to observe the colors and shapes of nature for your paintings. It has various illustrations throughout and 20 color plates. A very helpful book.

The following information is taken or paraphrased from the cover. This book is divided into three parts. There are 129 drawings, diagrams, and black and white reproductions of art as well as 20 full color illustrations. Hardcover, 176 pages, 8-1/2" x 11".

Part one covers the observation of nature discussing line direction, the relationship of points and of separate shapes, plus the interaction of straight and curved lines. It introduces the reader to plumbing, point-to-point drawing, scale, planes, tone and modelling.

Part two deals with color, tone, advancing and receeding colors, palettes, and analyzing colors in nature.

Part 3 deals with composition.

Seeing that this paint book is for children, it's the little one's opinion that counts. My daughter was so excited to begin painting, and she loved it! When you first look at the paint colors, they seem dark, but once she added a little water with the brush, they were perfect! The pink was just the right shade for Stephanie's hair and clothes, as well as the aqua-blue for Sportacus. The other reviewer said her paints were cracked - well, ours weren't, just a little creased which it normal. Anyway, a little water on the brush blends the paint back, so it was fine. The pages are porforated so you can remove before they paint if you'd like, and the story is very cute. The only thing is that the paint runs out quickly, but I'm sure that most households with children have plenty of paint on suppy. I recommend this paint book to all your little Lazytown fans out there.

So, I bought this, all excited to have something for my LazyTown collection (I'm an avid LazyTown fan), and I was disappointed with this product. I received the book, and one of those cheap cracked paint sets, not the pretty "LazyTown" one shown in the product image. Also, the right side of the book had a slight tear which looked like someone tried to attach the paint set to the right side of the book before realizing that it's not supposed to go on top of Sportacus.

The pictures inside are quite nicely drawn, on white paper, and have perforated edges so you can pull them out. There is a vague "story" with a couple sentences on each painting page, but it's mostly a description of each of the characters and the main plot of LazyTown. Concerning the pictures themselves, the artist seems to like drawing Stephanie's hair so that it curls around her face, and they draw Stingy like a zombie. That stare will haunt me for weeks. But there are pictures of Mayor Meanswell and Bessie Busybody, which is a plus.

The "calendar" on the back of this book is a joke; there are seven cut out tags saying such things as "rode my bike" and "helped a friend" which you're supposed to attach somehow to a cut out weekly calendar. The instructions read, "For each day, find a word card that tells about what you did that day and tape it on the chart. When the week ends, remove the cards and start again." ... I think a calendar with a little erasable pencil would be more useful, so you weren't restricted to doing these exact seven things on this week. (And completely besides the point, the picture of Stingy on said calendar is horrendous, and Sportacus doesn't look all that great either. Pah, they could've TRIED to find good pictures.)

If you have your own paint set for your kid to use, this is a nice little paint book, but if you're expecting a nice paint set to go with this, don't bother.

If you aren't an artist you may be frustrated by this one. I really didn't find this useful at all. I like great photos, but when it comes to paint books I want the artist to tell me HOW they did it, technique, paint mixing and all. Nice pictures won't help me mix paints or re-create the look in my own home. I have another book on faux finishing that tells you the ingredients. Ex: mix ochre with raw umber, 1 part glaze to 3 parts paint etc etc. I find that far more helpful. I think there are far better faux finish books on the market.

Thinking of re-painting a room or your entire house? Looking for innovative ways to transform your "inner image " of how it could look into realistic form and beauty? Read this book before you begin. It is filled with versatile ways to achieve exciting effect in the home with paint, either on the walls or on the furniture or on the floors. Ms Sloan presents painting techniques, the newest material, and provides a list of suppliers as well. Textured looks, pearlized paint, sparkle paint, how to use plaster and patterns make this a very savvy book. Glad I found it before I made a very expensive mess.

This was not one of Fern Michaels best books. However, I do think the book is worth reading. The plot is workable and even enjoyable. It was just missing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

This book was not as good as her others. Took a bit to get involved and intersted in this one. So be prepared to read slowly on the first couple chapters.

This book was worthless, quirky and amusing, but worthless for real tips. I hated the layout, the information on the companies was vague, the uses for the products were useless.

This book like the others by Joey Green, is not only entertaining but helpful too. I always knew there were other uses for things like VO8 hair products & Aunt Jemima Original Syrup but I was always afraid to try it. This book tells you of hundreds of other uses for brand name products you have just laying around your house. So the next time your baby has a diaper rash...reach for the Crisco All-Vegetable shortening!

Fair book, nothing really that new or exciting. Just the type of
book one can use on their bookshelf to fall back on.

Marie Monteith Sturmer's PAINT A QUILT PATTERNS focuses on stencils and how they can be adapted for applique, embroidery, scrapbooking and other projects. Over sixty stencil patterns are shown in nearly thirty quilt and home decoration projects, can be scaled up or down as needed for size, and are accompanied by full-page color photos of application results. The result will delight any who have wanted to incorporate stencils into a quilting project.

It is amazing how different the colors are look and behave. Confused by the labeling PB42 or Hue or ASTM I? Why does the same labelings (i.e. PR108) appear on multiple colors? What do those weird names really represent? It makes for interesting reading - the history, the best, and the worst products. I always wondered why some of my watercolors looked grainy. Not all colors by the best manufacturer rate highly. This book looks like a lifelong effort that will save your experimenting forever to find a good Cadium Red color, a member of one of the 10 major color groupings covered.

Inaccurate information abounds. Tiresome reading. Little good information. Overly expensive...sorry I bought it.

a poor quality book, badly written and full of mistakes. wilcox is clearly a charlaton, he rants on about other paints being poor quality whilst trying to sell you his own.
I do not recomend this book to anyone.
buy it at your peril

If you spend hours or days painting a watercolor picture, you are going to want to use the best possible paints. You won't want to see your painting fade, become blotchy, or otherwise deteriorate due to inferior paint. To prevent just that sort of thing, this reference book attempts to educate you on the pigments used in watercolor paints--their lightfastness especially, but also other qualities. Which pigments will fade or become blotchy over time? Which will stay strong and true? This book does its best to exhaustively answer those questions.

This book has been updated several times. It is due for another update, but since there is no telling when or even if such an update will be produced, it is still so valuable that I highly recommend getting it now before you buy any (more) watercolor paints.

Although I am reading it all the way through (because that's the kind of person I am), this is not a book to be read, but rather referred to. Let's say, for example, that you want to replace a red you've been using. You would turn to the description of the red pigments, glance through to find the pigments that have been rated highly lightfast by the ASTM (American Society for Testing and Measurement) and that have the color quality you want, then you would turn to the paint reference section to see what brands offer a red using the chosen pigment(s). Even if you cannot find a brand that suits you (and you should be able to), armed with the information in this book, you can go shopping with confidence, checking the paint tubes to make sure they have the pigment you want and not some pigment that will fade and ruin your painting.

For that alone, this book is valuable.

Allow me to address some of the comments other reviewers have made. One reviewer commented that the Da Vinci paints are student grade. I disagree. I've tried a number of different brands, and Da Vinci's artist-grade paints are wonderful--buttery, smooth, and a pleasure to use. (I also like many of Windsor & Newton's paints.) Yes, Michael Wilcox contracted with Da Vinci to create his own custom line of paints, but, as he states in the latest edition of this book, he did that many years after the initial editions in which he had already praised and recommended many of Da Vincis's paints. And he doesn't hold back in criticizing many of the Da Vinci student-grade paints, nor does he hold back in praising or criticizing any brand of paint.

I believe that Mr. Wilcox has tried to be as objective as possible, and I also do *not* see any inappropriate pushing of his own line of paints. He has a single very low-key page--at the back of the book!--describing the Michael Wilcox School of Color, which lets you be the judge of whether you want to look into it more. I also haven't seen any advertisements of his line of paints in the book yet, and, as I said, I'm reading it cover to cover. (I'm in the reds at the moment, though, so I could be wrong, but if the remaining pages follow the pattern already established, I don't expect to see any such advertisement in the remaining pages.)

Another reviewer said that this book has out-of-date paints (it does) and *doesn't* reflect reformulations (but it does). Had they read the book (though perhaps they had an older edition), they would have found Mr. Wilcox's reasons for including discontinued paints. He states that some people may have those older paints still in their supplies, and so he wanted to present that information for those people. If you are a watercolor artist, you know how long paints last. I have tubes I purchased ten years ago. I know artists who have tubes they purchased even longer ago. How valuable it is to be able to read what is in those paints, and possibly avoid using something that will, in the end, disappoint!

He also provides information on old formulas, with an arrow pointing to a new entry on the reformulated paint. Again, including information on both the old and new formulations is valuable. If you are an artist with the old formulation in your supplies, you will want to know that (A) it is perhaps unsuitable and (B) there is a better replacement available for it. Yes, it is possible that there have been even further reformulations since the last edition, but each edition has been keeping up with the times, and I fully expect that, should Mr. Wilcox produce another edition, it will be as up-to-date as possible.

The one valid criticism of this book is that it could be better organized and better edited. DEFINITELY. There are missing words, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, dead-end sentences, orphan sentences, sentence fragments, and so on pretty much on every page. The organization of the material could also be better, and more information on both his testing methods and on the ASTM standards would be greatly appreciated. Mr. Wilcox should perhaps be told that there are copy editors he can hire on a contract basis to copy-edit his works and improve them vastly. Better yet, a developmental editor, who will be more expensive but also more valuable, could help with the organization and content as well.

An alphabetical index of at least all the colors would be great too. A professional indexer could create such.

These are the reasons I gave this book four stars instead of five are (A) the age of the book, (B) the errors, and (C) the need to better organize and expand the content, especially the information on testing standards and methods.

However, flaws aside, this is an enormous work, enormously valuable, with clearly hundreds if not thousands of hours of work put into it, and the information shows that effort.

It should also be mentioned that, before Michael Wilcox published the first edition of this book, whether you would get good paints from even some of the major manufacturers was a hit-or-miss proposition. Many non-lightfast pigments were used, and poor quality paints were created, even by the giants. When this book hit the scene, it had a great deal of positive influence on the watercolor manufacturers. Many of them dropped or reformulated their more questionable paints. That in itself tells you the value of the information in this book. Of course, the ASTM had a lot to do with it too, but without this book pointing out the lack of clothes on the emperor, I am not sure how much weight the ASTM standards alone would have had.

If you are a watercolor artist, do yourself the favor of adding this book to your reference library.

This exhaustive (not to be confused with exhausting) research-based volume should be mandatory reading for all those artists interested in giving their customers their utmost quality of paint on works of art sold. So many paints are not light-fast, or are 'fugitive' (absolutely unreliable), or are packaged by the manufacturer as 'new' colors when they are, in fact, only creative blends of basic colors that any artist can create with colors they likely already have. This book, covering many of the watercolor paint producers in the Western world, exposes these flawed paints, but also gives credit where due to the top-notch pigments and their manufacturers. Details of content, health ratings, color-fastness and quality of brush use are easily understood. Fantastic color swatches (before and after exposure to light) are beside each manufacturer's sample. My only complaint is that this is the only edition available (pub. 1991), as the author said it would be updated periodically, which does not yet appear to have happened. There were only a couple of Quinacridone colors 12 years ago at the time of publication, whereas there are many more now.

This book was everything I hoped it was. It explained a lot of things about PSP that I didn't know. I mean that it help in all of the different versions of PSP. I was very pleased and I am still learning from it.

The title of my review says it all. Although the title of the book is "How To Do Everything ..." it mostly shows you how to manipulate your photo images. Has some basic info on the controls but very little about how to use Paint Shop Pro 8 in creating or modifying graphic images. Get Paint Shop Pro 8 For Dummies if you want more useful info for the same size book/price.

Yes, the title is very misleading! But that is not so much the fault of the author. McGraw Hill/Osborne has a whole series of "How to do Everything with" books. At first glance I thought this might be a great book for photographers ... because it didn't talk about all the "paint" features, the silly picture tubes etc. This is a fine book for beginners but I had hoped for more in a number of areas. His knowledge of cropping leaves a bit to be desired and most of the example photos are very amateurish. As I got further into the book I found that the author did not mention "unsharp mask" when discussing sharpening and the word "optimize" never found its way into the text!!! So I have to question the validity of this author! How can he work with photographs and not use the unsharp mask and optimize his work when it is saved? I had also hoped for more information about Scripting. There's nothing here about customizing recorded scripts. Since Scripting is one of the best new features about v.8 he should have gone into detail!
To my knowledge there is NOT an excellent, or really good book on the market about using PSP with photographs!

Although this book needs another title (it certainly does not cover 'everything' in PSP 8 especially things like brushes, filters, it is still an excellent reference for using PSP 8 with your digital photography images and teaching some digital photography techniques.

I bought:
Paint Shop Pro 8: The Guide to Creating Professional Images by Robin Nichols

How To Do Everything with Paint Shop Pro 8 by Dave Huss

Paint Shop Pro 8 Zero to Hero by Sally Beachman and Ron Lacey

Paint Shop Pro 8 Power by Lori Davis.

Dave's book is by far the best for digital photography and Paint Shop Pro 8, he knows his photography unlike the others who really seem to struggle to explain anything but the most basic, surface information. Zero to Hero by Beacham and Lacey is a complete was of money in my experience unless you are a person who doesn't have a clue when you are being fed garbage information by macjob type people who have no formal training in graphics design (it shows in their book). Robin Nichols book is much better than Dave's for covering brushes, filters, and giving examples of real creative design. Robin seems to have the best knowledge of graphic design principles and concepts and has the creative touch to bring it all together for the reader nicely. Lori Davis' book is much like Beacham and Lacey's when it comes to lacking any hint of unique, creativity, but at least Lori knows Paint Shop Pro well, unlike Beacham and Lacey who seem to be very limited in the topics they can discuss in detail. Lori's book is a good extension of the Paint Shop Pro 8 manual where she covers what has been done but uses more examples.

Out of these books if you have the cash purchase Dave's book for his digital photography and photo editing tips and tricks and advice. Buy Robin's book for creative ideas in designing from scratch graphics and learning creative ways to use the brushes and filters. Buy Lori's book to get if you want a more technical look at aspects of Paint Shop Pro 8's general features, but don't need creative insights. With these 3 books you should have more than you will ever need, but if you can only afford two than get Dave's and Robin's.

This book, with its step-by-step procedures, saved me loads of time and money. As an artist trying to ramp up very quickly on a new freelance job, this book showed me EVERYTHING I needed at first glance.
I created mouse-over buttons in seconds following the instructions in this book. I like the way the instructions are laid out: Pixel-, resolution-, and palette-settings are all defined for you! The "Create Images for the Web" chapter is a life-saver for anyone designing for the Web. With this book, I was able--in a very short time--to focus on my art, not the tool!!

The best reason to read "Building Professional Web Sites", I think, is to see a thorough example of how Active Server Pages can be used to make a web site "dynamic". But you'll need to know something of ASP before you begin.

In addition to ASP, the book explains all of the other steps in building the example web site (viewable at www.theblowhole.com), but it overtreats the simpler material and glosses over the complex. For example, there are pages and pages of figures showing what are basically the same installation screens for each piece of software you'll be using; meanwhile, VBScript code, used in ASP, is often put forth as if its purpose and mechanism is obvious. "Visual Interdev" is one of the "tools" the book requires, yet its function is far from obvious. The program is ostensibly for creating ASP pages, but ASP code is never presented in the context of using the Interdev software. Finally, the preface, having almost nothing to do with the rest of the book, goes on about programming nostalgia, and is tangential enough to scare off an earnest beginner.

There is "something for everyone" here, but that's not a good thing, because you're paying for everyone else's portion :-). Who, then, is the target reader? This is, as a whole, _definitely_ not for beginners with no programming knowledge, and advanced users will find much of the book extraneous (how to install your software, how to make graphic icons in a paint program). Intermediate readers like me get the most benefit, in terms of the number of subjects which are at our level.

Rated "Three stars" since the book has a fairly grand mission to live up to, and though I find the problems quite glaring, it is not "poor" by any means.

Excellent book for teaching yourself the intricacies of web development. I have recommended this book to all my students learning to design web sites.

Jeff and Lakeland has done a commendable job. Keep it up Jeff & JRL.

I am on page 153, and I am speechless. I am angry at the publisher Prentice Hall for not upholding better technical standards and editing. My opinion of Prentice Hall has been severely damaged after reading this book. Finally, I rebuke the authors for their misleading self-promotion on this site. Readers such as myself deserve to spend our money on quality technical literature. Your work is an insult to your readers' intelligence and common sense.

Yes, perhaps one should not get so frustrated or emotional over a book. But I am angry and here are my reasons:

(1) When I first read this book I was uneducated about web design and my confusion over this book's points I attributed to my ignorance; however, I now realize that this book is majorly flawed. Where to begin? It begins, "You can develop a Web site. You can do it! Yes, YOU! ...I'm going to show you how..." So, here I am, prepared for the author to hold my hand through the process. Now, if you will, jump to page 114 and, he's talking about "Normalizing a database." Not just talking about this... on page 100 he's talking about ASP "scope." Ok, you rebut and that say I'm slow on the uptake. Ok, then why are you teaching Frontpage 98! And then jumping to ASP and Normalization! But it gets better... so I'm digging into Access database normalization... and then 14 pages later, you are telling me the difference between Gif and JPEGS! and how to optimize them!

Come on authors, whom are you addressing with this book! You imply this book is direct towards a general audience and then you frequently digress into the most esoteric illustrations of complex topics.

Lastly, to those would be readers of this book, consider page 93. "That ends our software installation. We also need the Java classes for our rotating banner ad. You'll find the code for that at our Web site (see Appendix A)."

I thought I was buying the book so that I could read the code printed! And commented upon! And why are you even making me go to an Appendix to find the name of your Web Site!

Boy, I can't wait for the second edition of this book guys! Maybe you'll tell me about the wizards in Frontpage 97 in the year 2001!

The best reason to read "Building Professional Web Sites", I think, is to see a thorough example of how Active Server Pages can be used to make a web site "dynamic". But you'll need to know something of ASP before you begin.

In addition to ASP, the book explains all of the other steps in building the example web site, but it overtreats the simpler material and glosses over the complex. For example, there are pages and pages of figures showing what are basically the same installation screens for each piece of software you'll be using; meanwhile, VBScript code, used in ASP, is often put forth as if its purpose and mechanism is obvious. "Visual Interdev" is one of the "tools" the book requires, yet its function is far from obvious. The program is ostensibly for creating ASP pages, but ASP code is never presented in the context of using the Interdev software. Finally, the preface, having almost nothing to do with the rest of the book, goes on about programming nostalgia, and is tangential enough to scare off an earnest beginner.

There is "something for everyone" here, but that's not a good thing, because you're paying for everyone else's portion :-). Who, then, is the target reader? This is, as a whole, _definitely_ not for beginners with no programming knowledge, and advanced users will find much of the book extraneous (how to install your software, how to make graphic icons in a paint program). Intermediate readers like me get the most benefit, in terms of the number of subjects which are at our level.

Rated "Three stars" since the book has a fairly grand mission to live up to, and though I find the problems quite glaring, it is not "poor" by any means.

Worst book on web development I've ever purchased! Don't waste your money on it.. I glanced through the book once and tossed it on the shelf and never picked it up agian. It jumps from subject to subject never throughly covering anything. If you need a book on web development, select books by Wrox Press or O'Reilly. nuf said. Well... AMAZON how do I give it ZERO STARS?

This product is a great concept, but when I received it... all the paints were dried up! It's impossible to paint a "masterpiece" with dried up paints! I sent it back.

I purchased this kit on December 15th and received it after Christmas. When my best friend opened it up in our living room she was very pleased with the packaging and number of canvas boards included. We wished that there were more "famous" paintings, but she was still happy.


When she opened the paints to use it for the first time...they were all dry! I told her how sorry I was and to maybe add water to the paints...she told me that since they are acrylic paints, water wouldn't help. She tried anyway and she was correct.

I contacted Amazon and had them send out a replacement AND asked them to please check the paints first. When I received the replacements, she opened the paints and it was the same issue. I give up!

Terrible kit!

(If you are the manufacturer, you should consider using tubes of paint rather than the tubs that are used for water-based water color paints. It may retail higher, but it would be worth it to the consumer to purchase something that can be used.)

I ordered this item for a friend for Christmas. When she opened it all the paints were dried up and way too thick to bring back to life. I ordered a replacement and the replacement was as bad as the original. Very disappointing for her as she is elderly and this is her hobby. I would not recommend this item. I only gave it one star because there was no "0" choice.

I was so excited and still am about the idea of this product. However, at least 3 of the colors were so dried up that I could not even use them...which of course makes it difficult for a paint-by-number!

This kit is fantastic!!! It is really a lot of fun & the paintings cover nearly every taste in paint-by-number artwork you can think of (except for kitties!). The kit itself is really neat. One side contains the canvases, 10 in all. The canvases themselves are a Japanese scene, a French scene with a poodle, two puppies in a basket, a Southwest scene with pottery, a snowy cabin, the Mona Lisa, Sunflowers, a large ship at sea, a still-life of fruit & two parrots. The other side contains the paints, 2 brushes & a neat little book on the history of the art form.

Some things to consider & are usually true with any kit.

1. The paints are REALLY thick! This is good in the sense that you can water them down a lot, but they do require prep work before you can use each paint pot. Water, stirring, more water, etc. Use some toothpicks & stir well!

2. The brushes are WAY too thick! I have some of my own brushes from other kits & you really need a very small one for the tiny pieces.

3. Always fill in the spots with the arrows before the bigger places! Otherwise, how else will you know what to do?

4. The blended colors don't always come out exactly, but that's what makes each piece unique. Try mixing with one drop at a time. I ended up making too much of a few color combos & went through the other canvases to see if I could use that color elsewhere. The colors also didn't match to the pictures in the book, sometimes they were way off! The pictures in the book were too small also, but they gave you a general idea.

5. Several colors, especially the dark ones, needed a couple of coats. You will tell this when you put on the first coat.

I started with the Japanese scene & will be moving to the other pieces soon!