Romantic Oil Painting Made Easy

Firstly the plus points, there was only one page of materials - some books devote pages & pages; also I liked the author's impressionist style. There were some helpful tips re composition (though to a lot of us some of this comes naturally anyway) but also lots of small scrappy diagrams and too many rules! For me there were far too many very small pictures and not enough big ones, eg for one demonstration there were 43 small pictures before ending up with the finished article. To be fair, some of this is probably down to the publisher but all in all this is a book I would have preferred to borrow from a library - nice enough but not in my top twenty.

Excellent Quality

It was difficult to find any books by Robert Hagen and so I was very happy to find a copy of this book on Amazon. It arrived promptly and apart from smelling of smoke it was in very good condition. I like the way he works and explains his approach to 'telling a story' in his paintings. It will be much used!

This is a book written by an artist who understands just how describe the processes amateur artists like myself have to learn if they are to advance their skills. I have since produced a number of successful paintings using Robert Hagan's techniques

Robert Hagan is an exceptional talent. He uses just four tools to produce his wonderful paintings and a limited basic palette of colours.In this book Robert explains why he limits himself this way and then goes on to explain very clearly the nuts and bolts of making a painting, creating order, placement theory, colour value, command areas and balance and so on....If all this sounds a bit heavy and wordy, trust me it isn't. The text is accompanied by lots and lots of full colour photographs and diagrams of each and every stage. E.g. the section on the "Nuts and Bolts of a Painting" has eighteen photographs to support the text.There is a section on using photographs for reference. Robert does this a lot in his work and I have personally found the method Robert uses extremely helpful. Buy the book to find out why...The book continues with eight Step by Step Demonstrations, each covering a specific element such as figures, dealing with backlit scenes, foreground detail, how to add drama to your painting, colour temperature, making your paintings viewer friendly and so on... Each demonstration has a full colour plate of the completed work and once again countless step by step photographs to support the text. The demonstration on making your paintings user friendly has forty one supporting photographs and another dozen or so images of reference material used, sketches and so on...The paintings in the book are not only visually stunning, they are extremely well executed. The subjects of his paintings are varied ranging from seascapes, children, rodeo and cowboys, etc. so you are not limited to one theme.If you are still not convinced just Google "Robert Hagan". Not only will you come across several of his websites showcasing his work, but you will also find videos of Robert demonstrating too.This book is a joy to behold and is printed on paper of a high quality. I treasure my copy and refer to it often. I cannot recommend Robert's book highly enough. Buy it!