Books to look for:

The Art of Painting, From The Baroque Through Postimpressionism edited by Pierre Seghers in collaboration with Jacques Charpier from Hawthorn, Inc, 750 qC484 v.03, Library of Congress Catalog Number: 64-19203

The Art of Painting, From Prehistory Through The Renaissance edited by Pierre Seghers in collaboration with Jacques Charpier from Hawthorn, Inc, 750 qC484 v.01, Library of Congress Catalog Number: 64-13282

The Art of painting in the Twentieth Century  edited by Pierre Seghers in collaboration with Jacques Charpier from Hawthorn

Painters on Painting Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Eric Protter by General Publishing Company, Ltd. 750.1 P148 1997, ISBN 0-486-29941-4 (pbk.),

Techniques of the Great Masters of Art by Chartwell Books, Inc 751.409 fT255, ISBN 0-89009-879-4

50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, by Salvador Dali, Dover Publications, 751 fD14f 1992, ISBN 0-486-27132-3 (pbk.)

Familiar Faces - The Art of Mort Drucker, by David D, Duncan with Mort Drucker, PM 6727 D86 F3 1988, ISBN paperback: 0-941613-02-X

From The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, introduced by Edward MacCurdy, London: Jonathan Cape, 1938,

"What rules should be given to boys learning to paint."

...Thus I say to you , whom nature prompts to pursue this art, if you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects, begin with the details of them, and do not go on to the second step till you have the first well fixed in memory and in practice. And remember to acquire diligence rather than rapidity.

Steps

Perspective

Proportions of Objects

Copy from the Master

Copy from Nature

See the works of various Masters

Get into the habit of putting his art into practice and work

From "The Art Sprit" by Robert Henri by Harper & Row, 701 H51a 1984, ISBN 0-06-430138-9 (pbk)

"All satisfying things are good organizations. The forms are related to each other, there is a dominant movement among them to a supreme conclusion."

When painting in watercolor:

Make several mixtures of face color, about five. One very light and one very dark and evenly spaced tints in-between. Then you can paint with mixed color and do the shading cleanly. You should not try to mix the color on the paper. Using direct application of tints by themselves will be a lot more aesthetic. In fact it would not be a bad thing to have many colors premixed for a certain painting.
When I paint with watercolor I have about thirty little film canisters mixed up and then can quickly paint the light pencil drawing on the paper. After I am finished I put the caps back on and then into the freezer. I have all the film canisters around the edge of a paint box. In the middle is some paper sheets that mark the color that is in the canister.    

When painting in oil:

  In my manner, I use a little oil of cloves in my paint to prolong the drying and therefore rework areas until they are correct. The oil is about two drops in a quarter golf ball size to prolong drying to about seven days. I work in a smooth surface manner, which means that the paint is thin on the very smooth surface of the canvas. I apply gesso to primed canvas with a palette knife applying the thinnest coatings until the surface is very smooth like the surface of Bouguereau’s canvas. A final scraping with a razor blade in the area of the face before starting work on the face gives the best smooth surface but some of the metal from the blade turns the canvas gray. If you do not scrap with a razor blade the surface is pristine white which is best. Work is done on sections of the canvas to achieve the effect I want. The rest of the surface is bare canvas with a pencil drawing or cartoon. When it comes time to paint, I remove the pencil with alcohol and cotton swabs.

Henry Miller from

The Art of painting in the Twentieth Century  edited by Pierre Seghers in collaboration with Jacques Charpier from Hawthorn

....draw back the curtains. How they glow in the cold light of early dawn! Another hour or two and they will already have lost some of their gleam and sparkle. Coming on them by surprise this way they give the impression of having slept all night with their eyes open.

Is there any writer who rouses himself at daybreak in order to read the pages of his manuscript? Perish the thought!

THE practice of any art demands more than mere savoir faire. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts. Whether the beloved be a bowl of fruit, a pastoral scene, or the interior of a bawdy house makes no difference. One must be in it and of it wholly. Before a subject can be transmitted aesthetically it must be devoured and absorbed. If it is a painting it must perspire with ecstasy.

THE individual who can adapt to this mad world of today is either a nobody or a sage. In the one case he is immune to art and in the other he is beyond it. (To Paint Is To Love Again)

BUT one of the moments I like best, after having done what I imagine to be my utmost, is the realization that it won't do at all. I decide to convert the quiet, static picture in front of me into a live, careless, free and easy thing. I strike out boldly with whatever comes to hand—pencil, crayon, brush, charcoal, ink—anything which will demolish the studied effect obtained and give me fresh ground for experiment. I used to think that the striking results obtained in this fashion were due to accident, but I no longer am of this mind. Not only do I Know today that it is the method employed by some very famous painters (Rouault immediately comes to mind), but, I recognize that it is often the same method which I employ in writing. I don't go over my canvas, in writing . . . , but I keep breaking new ground until I reach the level of exact expression,  leaving all  the  trials  and  groupings  there,  but raising them in a sort of spiral circumnavigation, until they make a solid under-body  or  under-pinning,  whichever  the case may be. And this, I notice, is precisely the ritual of life which is practiced by the man who evolves. He doesn't go back, figuratively, to correct his errors and defects; he transposes and converts them into virtues. He makes wings of larval cerements. • TODAY I see that my steadfast desire was alone responsible for whatever progress or mastery I have made. The reality is always there, and it is preceded by vision. And if one keeps looking steadily the vision crystallizes into fact or deed. There is no escaping it. It doesn't matter what route one travels—every route brings you eventually to this goal. "All roads lead to Heaven," is the Chinese proverb. If one accepted that fully, one would get there so much more quickly. One should not be worrying about the degree of "success" obtained by each and every effort, but only concentrate on maintaining the vision, keeping it sure and steady. The rest is sleight-of-hand work in the dark, a genuine automatic process, no less somnambulistic because accompanied by pains and aches.

The stark lone portrait head of modern times is frightening because of its un relatedness. It is the symbol of the brain functioning in a void.

Going home in the Metro, got so interested in that bit of flesh just above the eyeball, in the spaciousness and voluptuousness of it, that I rode past my station. . . .

One day, odd as it sounds, you suddenly see what makes a wagon, for example. You see the wagon in the wagon—and not the cliché image which you were taught to recognize as "wagon" and accept for the rest of your life as a time-saving convenience. The development of this faculty, for an artist in any realm, is what stops the clock and permits him to live fully and freely. He gets out of rhythm with the crowd and in so doing he '' creates time'' to see what surrounds him. If he were moving like the others he would remain deaf and blind with them. It is the voluntary arrest that really sets him in heavenly motion and permits him to see, feel, hear, think. Eh, what? (The Waters Reglitterized)

The Artist's Method

The artist was twenty years old when he met his master. He had seen his large full length celebrity portraits that decorated a bar and had to meet him. The bartender pointed to a man slouched over the bar, drunk. Sitting up the master seemed rather interested in the young man. The master had a son but gave him up in a nasty divorce. Maybe the young artist, very interested in painting, substituted for his son.

The young artist had the gates of the painting firmament opened when he entered the master’s studio. Seeing the paint on the palette, the brushes, and the unfinished canvas the young artist knew instinctively what to do. Thirty years later the young artist still strives to paint smooth transparent figurative work in the manner of William Adolphe Bouguereau 1825-1905.

Initially four years of study were needed to gain the simple mastery of the technique. The master’s technique was wet on wet. He never repainted or glazed unless the first application was not good enough. His master likes to paint in the face as a mask of flesh only placing in the eyes, brows, lips after the face was formed completely finally using a Hacke brush to blend the color.

The young artist also paints the surface all at once working wet on wet. The work proceeds like a mural, applying only the plaster you can paint in a day. The young artists work starts with a simple pencil drawing. Once correct, most of the pencil is removed with a kneaded eraser or alcohol. The master likes to paint a simple line drawing of the subject with many of the details of the line revealing itself in the final surface.

The young artist applies his color in two parts. First the transparent color. The canvas provides the white and the thin veil of color creates the tone. Once the transparent color has been taken as far as it can to produce form the opaque layer is applied only in areas where it is needed to enhance the form. His master likes to use opaque color.

          The young artist works on a scrapped gesso canvas. His master works on sign painter’s canvas stretched on board painted middle violet. The young artist’s method is more time consuming. Stretching heavy cotton primed canvas over board and then apply gesso with a knife. Once dry he scraps the surface with a razor blade, reapplying gesso with a knife five to ten times till the surface is very smooth with a gray patina from the razor blade he uses to scrap the gesso smooth.  He uses regular oil paint mixed with very little oil of cloves to prevent it from drying and safflower oil as a medium for it long drying time. The oil of Cloves is a trick of his master. The colors they use are the same, brown madder alizarin, alizarin, WN bright red, Vandyke brown, olive green, transparent yellow ochre, Naples yellow, lemon yellow, sap green, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue,  Thylo blue, ivory black, and titanium white.

          The master and the young artist palette are the same, a sheet of glass. The young artist palette is a 16” x 12” single pane of glass that he keeps in a Tupperware box in the freezer when not working. The colors are arranged in up down rows with the red row on the far left, next is the green row then the yellow row followed by the blue then violet rows with the last row on the right the black row. The bottom of the rows is the light color and the top the darkest. By mixing the rows across you get variety. Most colors start as a mixture of two opposites or not so much an opposite but still a dirty clean color is the result.

Work starts on the face with laying in color with a number 4 round red sable. When the area is mostly filled in a smaller brush is used. To blend the color a used filbert sable is cut at a diagonal and used to stipple the colors together. Smaller and smaller brushes are use until all the spaces are filled in. A #1 red sable stripping brush is used for the final blending. The brush is dry and by slightly touching the brush at an angle to the surface the paint is slowly blended. Work proceeds at a steady pace for ten days while the paint is still wet.

The young artist learned that he was obsessed with the surface of the painting not so much about what is painted.