Making a mark - Artists' Favourite Art Books in 2014

It's time to update the list I keep of the favourite art books you like. 

There's no two ways about it - some art instruction books go on and on forever because they have a huge fan base. They get revised and reprinted on a regular basis and some of them sell millions of copies.

Others seem to have the status of a 'best kept secret' where you're only allowed to know about them once you've proved your value as an artist!

At the same time, there are new books coming out all the time which very soon 'make their mark' and join that list of favourite art books.  I know I've got books which have come out in the last five years which will be on many people's favourite art books list for many years to come.

Here is my current listing of Artists’ Favourite Art Books

Your favourite art books - five years on

It's now more than five years since that original review of favourite art books and I'm now aiming to do a major review - with posts every day this week. 

I first started reviewing what sort of art instruction books artists liked  in 2009 with Your favourite art books - what you like.  Last year I focused on what were the new books you liked in Your NEW Favourite Art Books.

The questions remain essentially the same

• Do you have a favourite art book?
• Is there one book which had a huge impact on you and your work?

Other questions which tend to make you realise which books are valued most are:

• Which book(s) do you recommend to others?
• Which book(s) will you never ever lend out?

What would be very helpful is if we can all share the reasons why we find different books to be very helpful.  What suits one person might not help others in the same way.

I'm going to tackle this day by day by looking at different types of art instruction book.

This week I'm going to focus on the different categories and the categories for the next four days are:

• Subject Matter (Monday)
• Drawing and Sketching (Tuesday)
• Painting - all media (Wednesday)
• Colour and Composition (Thursday)
• Being an artist / art business & marketing (Friday)

Please start having a think about what your favourite books are - the ones you recommend to others and won't lend out!

a small section of my book shelves holding art books!

You'll be able to read what books people recommend as their comments get posted. You might want to bookmark a posts so you can come to come back to it easily and read the results

In addition, I will also publish a summary of the results of this request for recommendations in a later post and, where relevant on my websites "The Best Books about....".

I will also link to people's blogs where they have written a good quality review of a book.