Bosch: the Life and Work of the Artist

From dust jacket "Here is an innovative 'idea book' for every landscape painter who has mastered basic painting techniques and is now searching for ways to develop his creativity and his individual style. Edward Betts, one of America's most creative painters, presents 74 inventive, offbeat approaches to painting landscapes, exemplified by leading and realistic abstract artists. First the author encourages the reader to explore his own feelings about nature and identify those landscape subjects which move him deeply. Then Betts presents 50 imaginative ways to approach landscape painting - by experimenting with viewpoint, lighting, color, unusual types of subject matter, and painting processes. Among the stimulating landscape painting ideas he presents are low horizon, distortion of scale, intentional ambiguity, detailed foreground, framing with foreground elements, the long horizontal composition, the oval or circular format, white as a major area, distortion of scale, imagination and fantasy, multiple views of a single subject, geometry in landscape, and personal symbols....The color section begins with the author's discussion of color relationships, color as esthetic organization and expression, color in composition, and the difference between descriptive and nondescriptive color. He then analyses color as light and decoration, color unity and control, color schemes and various color systems, and lists numerous suggested palettes. In the gallery of color plates, Betts presents 24 more fresh and provocative approaches by well-known artists. Analyzing these powerful paintings, Betts explroes how to use color as mood, low and high color contrast, single dominant color, muted color, color mosaic, color as space, color glazes, and color shock...." 152 pages, 8.25 x 11 inches, 24 pages of color, 50 b&w illustrations, bibliography, index.