Landscape Painting Inside and Out: Capture the Vitality of Outdoor Painting in Your Studio With Oils

I love this book! Kevin McPhearson is not only an inspiring painter, but a skilled teacher as well. I keep this open in my studio and refer to it often. How does he handle trees? How about those clouds? Even experienced painters will find themselves using this book in more than a cursory way. He also has many wonderful tips about pochade boxes and travelling with your painting gear.

I read Kevin's earlier book and mentioned it previously here on Amazon and yes, I thought it was great but THIS one...this one is...is...damn...words fail me. It's just simply the best book on plein-air painting I've ever read (and I must have 30 or more on this subject alone). Kevin has outdone himself with this one. He's taken all the valuable info contained in his previous book and just added to it and added to it. I'm looking and looking but I can't find ANYTHING that he may have left out or not talked enough about.

Years ago, before he established himself as The Man when it comes to teaching people how to paint outdoors, I took a couple of workshops with him and, during the first couple of days outdoors and trying to be somewhat easy in his suggestions to improve my picky little paintings, he finally got frustrated with what I'd continued to put on the canvas and, took his thumb and WHOOSH--smeared out a laborious passage I'd painstakingly put in there and wiped off his thumb and WHOOSH, did it a second time and I'll never forget how much BETTER the painting looked after those two swoops. My biggest mistake was in not stopping right there, putting it away and saving that thing for me to look at again and again. That same mentality permeates his book; you can't help but improve your paintings if you read this book and apply the principles therein.

Another note is the two back-pages by his wife, Wanda, who was only just beginning to paint when I knew them. She can really paint now but she
maintains that being really good (which she is) is not the point, but that just getting out there and not being afraid to fail and just enjoy yourself should be a reward in itself. I found her remarks to be in good juxtaposition to Kevin's solid, on-target prose about well, "Landscape Painting Inside and Out".

Buy it. Better yet, go to his website and see if you can get into a workshop with him. You won't be disappointed.

One of the most helpful art books I have in my collection - lots of step by step descriptions and painting challenges. I highly recommend this book not only for oil painters, but all media.

This is a great book with lots of useful suggestions about painting, managing a career, developing self discipline as an artist, etc. I expect to use a lot of these ideas even though my primary genres are figure and portraiture.

Kevin MacPherson has written a wonderful book. As an artist I am constantly trying to perfect my paintings, and this book is a great tool. If you are wondering "Should I purchase another art book?", the answer is YES to this one.