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Oil Painting Essentials: Mastering Portraits, Figures, Still Lifes, Landscapes, and Interiors
An essential guide to the oil painting techniques that will allow artists to master a variety of subjects, including figures, portraits, still life, landscapes, and interiors.Many painters limit themselves to one type of subject matter, but in Oil Painting Essentials, artist and art instructor Gregg Kreutz shows how a multi-genre approach can dramatically improve your painting skills. Arranged by category, each chapter covers both the essentials specific to that subject matter and those that apply to all genres. Through step-by-step lessons and examples from his own oil paintings, Kreutz shows how you can strengthen your skillset for one genre by painting in another. This comprehensive exploration of the conceptual and practical issues behind oil painting provides all of the tools and encouragement you need to successfully take on any type of oil painting.
- GenresArtNonfiction
159 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 26, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 15, 2025
Oil Painting Essentials doesn’t waste any pages on discussing art supplies or palettes. It dives right in to the thick of things. It starts off talking about things that are universal to all oil paintings, like selectivity, depth, and light and shadow. The rest of the book is broken down by genre (figure, portrait, still life, etc), and the author teaches how his “oil painting essentials” fit into each one.
While the book didn’t give me any big “ah-ha!” moments, the author had a lot of valuable insight to give. I appreciated his approach to the portrait. He believes that a likeness to your model is not the only point of the painting, but something that will happen naturally if you manage the rest of the painting correctly. I also enjoyed seeing his sequence for painting. I’ve only tried painting his way a couple of times and it was disastrous each time. however, I can see the value in starting with an abstract block-in instead of a stiff drawing or outline.
His paintings remind me of the old masters’ artwork. It’s dark and dramatic and almost looks like it was painted three hundred years ago instead of last week. They’re beautiful. I’ve always loved seeing how each artist has their own unique style and flair for making their artwork distinct.
Overall: A good book with good advice for the intermediate oil painter.
Content: A section on painting the nude figure
Source: I received a copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
My blog: Batch of Books
While the book didn’t give me any big “ah-ha!” moments, the author had a lot of valuable insight to give. I appreciated his approach to the portrait. He believes that a likeness to your model is not the only point of the painting, but something that will happen naturally if you manage the rest of the painting correctly. I also enjoyed seeing his sequence for painting. I’ve only tried painting his way a couple of times and it was disastrous each time. however, I can see the value in starting with an abstract block-in instead of a stiff drawing or outline.
His paintings remind me of the old masters’ artwork. It’s dark and dramatic and almost looks like it was painted three hundred years ago instead of last week. They’re beautiful. I’ve always loved seeing how each artist has their own unique style and flair for making their artwork distinct.
Overall: A good book with good advice for the intermediate oil painter.
Content: A section on painting the nude figure
Source: I received a copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
My blog: Batch of Books
January 6, 2023
Optimal sequence step by step: Placement, background, shadow, light
Still life:
Concept essentials: textural variety, size variety, mass the shapes, make light the main event, make the color move, the value move (dark to light)
Landscapes:
Concept essentials: structural significance, select what’s important (depth, design and drama), use shadow to Brighten the light, make light the main event
Process essentials: a variety of strokes, paint in a logical sequence, don’t lock into any process too rigidly
Portraits:
CE: make sure the picture has movement, reduce the amount of colors and values in the picture, select for humanity, select for depth, make light the main event, create structure with shadow, balance integration and balance
PE: use abstract paint to begin the painting
Figures:
Interiors:
Still life:
Concept essentials: textural variety, size variety, mass the shapes, make light the main event, make the color move, the value move (dark to light)
Landscapes:
Concept essentials: structural significance, select what’s important (depth, design and drama), use shadow to Brighten the light, make light the main event
Process essentials: a variety of strokes, paint in a logical sequence, don’t lock into any process too rigidly
Portraits:
CE: make sure the picture has movement, reduce the amount of colors and values in the picture, select for humanity, select for depth, make light the main event, create structure with shadow, balance integration and balance
PE: use abstract paint to begin the painting
Figures:
Interiors:
August 16, 2017
Full of good information. I especially like how Kreutz presents tips. He routinely chooses headings that sum up a concept perfectly, and adds just enough body text to explain it clearly. For example, he clearly explains *how* to simplify what I see, a tip that I read over and over in books with no clear explanation of what exactly that means. (Hint: Fewer values and fewer colors. I would add fewer shapes, with the help of what James Gurney calls shapewelding.)
Beware that some of the theory is wrong. (Ex, it isn't the warmth of the reflection that makes a pot look like metal (page 12); it's the type of reflections: specular vs. diffuse. Cool vs. warm highlights make a nice shortcut to painting ceramic vs. copper pots in neutral light, but it should be presented as a shortcut.)
However, this book is still worth studying. It really does cover essentials that I haven't seen explained anywhere else.
Beware that some of the theory is wrong. (Ex, it isn't the warmth of the reflection that makes a pot look like metal (page 12); it's the type of reflections: specular vs. diffuse. Cool vs. warm highlights make a nice shortcut to painting ceramic vs. copper pots in neutral light, but it should be presented as a shortcut.)
However, this book is still worth studying. It really does cover essentials that I haven't seen explained anywhere else.
April 19, 2023
This is a nice, short book, and I like that the author skips entirely the usual materials chapter and jumps right into the theory. Because he has some excellent ideas, the best of them being his procedure, which he calls placement-background-shadow-light, and uses throughout the book in all the various genres he works within. It's nice that he says quite early on that oil painting is for those who like to work with oil paint; that sounds obvious, but oil painting can be rather messy. But the author's basic principals apply generally to painting with oil, with acrylic, or also (these days) digital painting. Recommended for its brevity and consistency.
June 20, 2016
"Oil Painting Essentials" was about aspects of composition that the author then applied to painting portraits, naked women, still lifes, cityscapes, and interiors. It's not a "how to paint" book, and these principles apply to more than just oil painting. If you've got a decent painting but you feel like it's lacking something, he'll suggest how to add "drama" to your painting.
He teaches you to paint in the same style that he does. He paints backgrounds with little to no detail--and often very dark--then he spotlights his point of interest, which is painted in detail. Some of his favorite principles were about being selective about what to show in detail, using contrasting colors or values, and making light the main event.
He did include basic painting principles that apply to all styles of painting. He also did a good job of defining what he meant by a term so I wasn't confused. The paintings that he used to illustrate a point were good at showing that point. If you like his style, he'll certainly help you to paint that way.
But I didn't really care for his style as the subjects lack context. Also, I sometimes wondered about his tips when he'd say something like, 'this makes the fruit clearly look like a nectarine' and I'm thinking, 'oh, is that what it is? I thought maybe it was an apple.' So his tips didn't always work on me.
I received this book as a review copy through Blogging for Books.
He teaches you to paint in the same style that he does. He paints backgrounds with little to no detail--and often very dark--then he spotlights his point of interest, which is painted in detail. Some of his favorite principles were about being selective about what to show in detail, using contrasting colors or values, and making light the main event.
He did include basic painting principles that apply to all styles of painting. He also did a good job of defining what he meant by a term so I wasn't confused. The paintings that he used to illustrate a point were good at showing that point. If you like his style, he'll certainly help you to paint that way.
But I didn't really care for his style as the subjects lack context. Also, I sometimes wondered about his tips when he'd say something like, 'this makes the fruit clearly look like a nectarine' and I'm thinking, 'oh, is that what it is? I thought maybe it was an apple.' So his tips didn't always work on me.
I received this book as a review copy through Blogging for Books.
July 25, 2016
These essentials are the ones that make your painting work. Kreutz walks his reader the concept and process of pil painting and then goes on to show how that applies to the different areas mentioned in the subtitle. I can honestly say I learned from this book.
He provides plenty of show and tell illustrations. There's enough explanation to get you headed in the right direction. The book itself is a good weight paper for art reprints, well bound, and I thought attractive. Just thumbing through it I can almost guarantee the reader will pick up some good pointers for his own work or will learn how the painter can do what he does. Art appreciation.
He provides plenty of show and tell illustrations. There's enough explanation to get you headed in the right direction. The book itself is a good weight paper for art reprints, well bound, and I thought attractive. Just thumbing through it I can almost guarantee the reader will pick up some good pointers for his own work or will learn how the painter can do what he does. Art appreciation.
July 31, 2016
This work is a textbook-like intermediate tutorial on improving oil painting skills. I had expected something for a beginner, so it wasn't as helpful to me; however, if you have any experience with this medium, this book could be very beneficial. It is pretty easy to follow and the artwork was moving. A good gift for an art student or hobby painters looking for more direction.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
June 25, 2024
excellent!
December 24, 2017
The title Oil painting essentials may confound somebody: it is not a book for beginners but intermediate or advanced painters. You're supposed to know materials, basic concepts and procedures. So it lacks in some of the parts that nearly every basic how-to-paint book contains meeting the reader at another level, where new problems need solution. It helps to find out what's wrong and reassumes the most important things to know about painting in oil in realistic style. The book is divided in main chapters that treat basic concepts and procedures while painting specific subjects like portraits, figures, still lifes, landscapes and interiors. There are kind of checklists in order to help out the artist to find and fix the problem.
But it is not only about techniques. As soon as I begun reading this book I found myself agreeing the author, based on my own experience, for example when he says that sensibility and not practicing time is the key for progress as an artist or also when he speaks about the special relation between portrait artist and the subject. There are valuable insights on being an artist. The volume is filled with the beautiful artwork of the author.
But it is not only about techniques. As soon as I begun reading this book I found myself agreeing the author, based on my own experience, for example when he says that sensibility and not practicing time is the key for progress as an artist or also when he speaks about the special relation between portrait artist and the subject. There are valuable insights on being an artist. The volume is filled with the beautiful artwork of the author.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews