The Acrylics and Gouache Artist's Handbook: A Practical Guide to Acrylics and Gouache Painting for the Home Artist

by Barron's (Editor)

Modern acrylics, which are plastic-based pigments, offer artists many of the same possibilities and effects as the more traditional gouache paints, which are opaque water-based pigments. This manual offers detailed instruction on creating paintings in both media. Titles in the new Artist�s Handbook Series are designed for dedicated amateurs but will also by used and valued by professional artists. Each title in the series has a sturdy hardcover binding, allowing it to be taken out to the field as handily as it is used in the studio. The books� hidden spiral bindings keep pages lying flat, so students can work freely with their art materials without having to fight with their instruction manual. Each title supplements textual instruction with more than 400 color illustrations showing paintings in various stages of completion. There is detailed information on artists� tools, techniques, mixing colors, creating special effects, and trouble-shooting to correct errors. All Artist�s Handbooks show examples of works by famous artists in the respective media to help students see how each medium has been used by world-renowned masters.

Genres: Art

224 pages, Spiral-bound

First published November 1, 2003

Reviews

[Juneko Robinson]

A well-illustrated basic overview of acrylic techiques, which was fine for my purposes but, despite the title, virtually nothing on gouache per se.

[Bryan Whitehead]

This is a good general introduction to the subject. Entries on gouache are scarce, so if that’s your main interest then you should probably seek elsewhere. On the acrylics side, coverage is fairly thorough. Some of the descriptions and examples left me wondering why one wouldn’t simply switch to oils or watercolors, but at least they demonstrated the versatility of acrylics (especially with extra media added). I admit to skimming the section on color and composition, looking for medium-specific information rather than (in my case largely unnecessary) lectures on basic theory. And I felt that some of the text reflected the author’s biases a bit too strongly. However, as someone who hasn’t done much with this kind of paint, I found the work overall helpful and easy to follow.