The Oil Painter's Color Handbook: A Contemporary Guide to Color Mixing, Pigments, Palettes, and Harmony

This is one of the most valuable and readable art books I've purchased! Invaluable for understanding all aspects of color and color mixing from a practical perspective. It had excellent illustration and imagery to accompany the concepts. It's one of the few art books I've actually read cover-to-cover. It has some overlap with Schmid's Alla Prima, particularly in the guidance to create color references and charts, but with a twist and greater explanation and guidance. It's also liberally peppered with original art by the author to complement the text, but also other magnificent paintings by many others as well. However it is not a substitute for Alla prima - which is a more general text and delves much more into many other aspects of painting impressionistic realism but less into color and color theory.

Todd Casey's book is full of solid info on color, which every artist should learn to improve their craft. From a variety of color wheels to info on ain't pigments, he covers many topics to give you a deeper understanding about color. Well written and readily understandable, the book is also generously illustrated with full color examples to deepen your understanding.

5/5 stars! This book is the best! Such a lovely book and easy to follow with. Very detailed with thorough explanations. Would definitely recommend this book to anyone diving into oil painting or art in general! Price was worth every bit of information in this book!

This book is exceptional, I genuinely felt giddy as I flipped through the pages. It’s perfect comprehensive resource for oil painters on the ever-complex topic of color. Highly recommend

I use this book all time. Contains great tips.

This was a great book to learn more about mixing color for painting. Nice hard cover book with quality pages.I read through the book in less than a week cause I didn't want to put it down. The first few chapters were a bit more about color history and some things that I already knew, but once you get to chapter 5, it gets really good and had information I haven't seen presented anywhere else about color mixing.I'm not sure if this author has any other books out there, but would buy more if he did. There are a lot of nice photos throughout the book and great color wheels, especially helpful if you use Gamblin Oil paints since some of the detailed color wheels plot the gamblin pigments on the wheel and shows where they are in relation to all other colors in the paint line.I am probably going to go back through the book now that I finished it and write down all the highlights of great information into a notebook to keep near my easel.!

In my over 40 years of oil painting experience theirs a couple of things I have learned about Art books...One... if you can't put it in a visual format why write it? Most Artist will absorb information via visual pictorial example... that means lots of pictures...Because Artist are Artist...who's business is the business of making pictures...it only makes logical since to use that medium to communicate with them...This book does just that... plenty of pictorial examples to fully explain this complex subject matter...Secondy is why publish a book explaining color that is printed only in black and white?yes... I have seen many books over the years who attempted to do just that...This book is filled with full color examples of master works related to the written explanation of why that particular Artist use of color and pallet was important...plus... there are over whelming full color schematics of the various color pallets used by the old masters and some modern masters as well... the book covers into color theory extensively enough to explain why what we learned in elementary school about color is simply wrong... explaining how there are different color gamuts of light, pigment, the printing process, computer monitors etc... and these all have to be taken into account as an oil painter in the modern world...having studied and practiced oil painting for many years not everything is covered... however I was pleasantly surprised just how comprehensive this book covered the subject...This is a serious Art book for the serious Oil Painter who wants to learn the craft with a most up to date study on the subject...

'The Oil Painter's Color Handbook: A Contemporary Guide to Color Mixing, Pigments, Palettes, and Harmony' is a good guide for color mixing. Each topic is clearly explained in the text, and is also illustrated with captions, charts, diagrams, and finished paintings. This is one of the most comprehensive books on color theory for artists. It covers everything from understanding color relationships to how to use color wheels. It explains complex concepts and provides easy to understand answers.