The most interesting art book I’ve read is called “Daily Painting” and is written by the amazingly talented Carol Marine. While I own many art books, this is the only one that I’ve read cover to cover. All others, as I’ve noticed are more like textbooks. (Mind you, very interesting, colourful, beautiful textbooks :)) On the other hand, this book was like a biography. It almost felt like I was talking to a fellow artist. It is a beautiful story of her life, very easy to read and interesting.
The whole concept of the book is that you learn so much more when you paint small and paint frequently, rather than spending months working on a single piece. It makes a lot of sense, because you’re repeatedly taking all of the decisions required for a painting (from composition, to proportions to colour choices) frequently, maybe even multiple times a day basis how small and frequent your paintings are. In contrast to working on one piece for a month, and making all of those decisions just once in that month. Making those decisions over and over, more frequently help you learn much faster and much more. Moreover, smaller paintings don’t get in the way of life. They need lesser space, are cheaper for the frugal artist, and are easier to sell.
She also addresses the question of – Okay so you’ve made hundreds of smaller paintings. But what do you do with them!? How do you sell them off? A lot of tips to sell art online in this book are outdated, mainly because social media is ever evolving. But she does run a daily painting website which gets a lot of traffic from collectors. It might be worth to check that out, if you paint frequently and want to sell small pieces of art.
Between the stories of her life, like working a full time job and having a family and how it affected her art, the book is peppered with very practical art lessons and advice. This book contains the best colour theory lesson I’ve ever seen. I finally understood the colour wheel, and also the concept of cool and warm primaries. I learnt about composition, and why some paintings look better than others. She’s basically made a cheat sheet for artists which is so easily useful.
I know for sure that this is one book I'm gonna keep going back to and re-reading several times. I totally recommend this for anybody who is getting into oil or acrylic painting.