Recommended Reading List (click on the book for a link to the Amazon page)
A must for an authentic
understanding of composition. You can't compose until you understand how the human eye reads the picture plane. 
This book is clear about one thing: the hardest part about being an artist is stepping up to the easel or sitting down to the laptop to create. Pressfield arms you with an awareness of every resistant thought in your head and proceeds to tell you how to defeat each one. |
Hale was legendary for his lectures on anatomy for the artist. His student, Terrance Coyle compiled and edited his lectures into this book. It will save you tons of time and research by walking you through the essential human anatomy required for artistic expression. Each part of the body is examined first through aspect drawing of the planes, the "landmarks," and then the skeletal structure and finally the muscles and their movement. Not heavy reading but thankfully heavily illustrated!
Schmid discusses aspects of and practices in alla prima painting like no other. He includes a whole chapter on Edges, which is rarely discussed by other authors. His book stands out primarily because he is relating what he has learned in his personal experience of painting instead of lecturing about how to paint.
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