An overview of the tools and materials of oil painting, this book contains advice about colour palette, colour mixing and applied colour theory, preparing a canvas, designing a composition, direct painting, scumbling, blending, layering, glazing, impasto, monotyping. It also shows you the most effective ways to work with light and shadow, model forms, handle values and achieve colour harmony, as well as how to develop ideas and solve common painting problems. Capture the heat of summer light or the crisp, cold light of winter. Paint a brilliant blue sky filled with billowing clouds or the lifting of a late morning mist. The pros teach all this and more in the section on landscape painting. You'll learn, too, from the masters how to express with confidence the many gestures, moods and forms of the human figure on the section on figure painting. In the section on still life, you'll find out how to create interesting set-ups and translate the forms and textures of objects into paint. This book has something for everyone, from the greenest novice to the more experienced painter. It's filled with detailed step-by-step demonstrations, some based on working from photographs and sketches, and others focusing on painting on location and from live models.