The Contemporary Oil Painter’s Handbook by Clifford T. Chieffo (review)

56 Book Reviews This is a paperback reprint of a book first published in 1959, and it shows its age. The "traditional" of the subtitle refers to works of Impressionist or post-Impressionist technique, although Brooks briefly discusses underpainting and glazing. The "new" is mainly Cubist or post-Cubist style, with a brief mention of pure abstraction and collage. Works by different artists reproduoed as examples of alternative points of view are, for the most part, uninspiring. The black-and-white reproductions are generally grayish, and the color plates, which seem to be from a three-color process instead of a four-color process, tend towards muddy reds and browns. Nevertheless, the student who follows the author's many suggestions and actually does the exercises can get a good start in broadening his or her horizons and opening up new ways of expression. Frank Covino's book is more limited and thus could be more useful to anyone interested in realistic painting. His method, based on the old masters, was systematized and taught for many years by Frank Reilly at the Art Students League of New York and later in his own private academy. Covino presents it here (with due credit to Reilly) with his own modifications. Covino is a great believer in photographs as source material. He gives us a good opening chapter on using the camera to capture accurately the values of a subject, and on filters for controlling values. His second chapter, The Science of Accurate Drawing, is really more about copying. It explains the use of a grid in copying a photograph onto a canvas. Covino does point out important aspects of drawing, such as the relationships of line directions and the attention that should be given to negative shapes. This is valuable for the beginner, but good drawing is much more than the accurate representation of what the eye sees. The next chapter gives some basic principles of composition. In the chapter on values, the author introduoes a controlled palette he devised (inspired by Frank Reilly). It is divided into vertical strips with nine values between black and white. It is covered with glass or plastic on top of which the student mixes colors as a guide for obtaining the desired value matched to the one on the palette. Covino discusses the technique of underpainting with grays, both in oils and acrylics, as a preparation for later overpainting and glazing in color. I criticized Covino's book The Fine Art of Portraiture (Leonardo, Winter 1972-73) for recommending linseed oil as an underpainting medium. I am pleased to note that in the present work he has corrected this and states that it is "imperative that no oil be used in your underpainting colors. Use an evaporating medium (lean) like the resin turpentine." An interesting explanation of value keys closes this chapter. However, some of the photographs used to illustrate these keys are captioned incorrectly, such as No. 112, which looks more like an intermediate major rather than minor key, and 113,a low majorratherthan minor. I also found an error with reference to Rubens's flesh tones, which are bluish, rather than gray-green as Covino states (unless seen on uncleaned paintings through yellowed varnish) and are achieved not with verdaccio underpainting but with a warm underpainting which, in the shadow areas, become optically cool when overpainted with the pink flesh tones (Helmut Ruhernann: The Cleaning of Paintings, Faber & Faber, London, 1968, pp. 349-350). On the whole, this is an excellent chapter with a great deal of useful information. The following chapters on color are equally good. Covino bases his treatment on the Munsell system, clearly explaining the control of color intensities without changing hue or value. He presents a series of color mixing exercises in which the student makes charts of each color in different values and intensities to acquire a better understanding of color and how to mix. He suggests color schemes the student can tryout in paintings. He explains set palettes and how to paint particular effects by adding the color of the light source to the paints. I would like to take issue with a few of his statements. Mixing a...