I shy away from buying art books, I've been burned by a few. You know the kind, where the artist just writes a book to get his name out and try to get more popular. The kind that are very light on technique yet show full color paintings on every page. I even decided not to buy any more books like that, but everyone kept recommending this one so I thought I'd try it.

I must say, it's not like the average books I was describing above. If you just thumbed through it you'd find a lot of his paintings, but if you take time to read the captions you'll see that he gives his insights and points out specific points related to the text for each one. It's one thing to say "use warm/cool contrast around the focal point", and it's another to demonstrate it with a real painting. The book covers some basics, things I've seen before, but they are presented in the author's unique way which makes them easy to understand. Sometimes I need to see something several times before it makes sense, and many of these theories seemed to make a lot more sense to me after reading the book.

Before reading the book, I wasn't particularly fond of his painting style. But once I read into his strategy and technique, I can honestly say I appreciate his art a lot more. I guess I didn't like it much before the book because I just didn't understand all that was going on. So keep an open mind and don't judge the book by his painting style alone.

The photos of his studio and the last section were extremely interesting. I was asking myself throughout the entire book "What colors does he have on his palette". Fortunately he does tell at the end. I could recognize the phthalo blue in his paintings, which he confirmed at the end. I'm going to try using it a bit more.

Finally, I usually don't refer to other reviews but I think it's unfortunate that two low reviews can distort the rating of this fine book. One gives 2 stars yet seems to approve of the book. And the other is just totally opposite of my experience.

Overall, a great book that I highly recommend to other artists.

I own well over 50 art books. Some are instructional, some are just good for studying the great painters. Of all my instructional type books, I would rate this #1!! I love his style and his lessons are terrific. I teach Impressionist oil painting and my students love this book as well! I hope he writes another-I will buy it.

More than a "how to" book, Dan McCaw's philosophy of "painting from the heart" may be obvious, but it is stated with compelling sincerity.

I wonder if the glowing reviews that appear below were written by people who have a financial interest in the success of this book? The advice it contains is pretty simple and middle of the road, but, like a previous reviewer, I found the illustrations chosen to support the advice to be really poor.