The bestselling author of The Oil Painter’s Color Handbook presents 25 essential exercises designed to take your art to the next level

Elevate your painting practice with this collection of exercises designed for artists of all skill levels, from beginner to advanced. Drawing on The Oil Painter’s Color Handbook, this collection of essential exercises teaches an understanding of light and perception, materials, and the skills needed to work successfully in oil.

Each chapter functions as a standalone module, allowing painters to follow the book in chronological order or jump in where they like. Early exercises delve into how pigments, layering of paint, mark making, and brush language all influence how artists see and experience color, and how that translates into a finished painting. Subsequent chapters focus on value – the underlying structure of color – applying color to simple forms, and creating color strings.

The book’s final chapters delve into the palettes used by different artists, color schemes, and learning to satisfy one’s curiosities, as well as the most sophisticated aspects of perception: color harmony and the psychology of color.

Above all, these exercises are meant to be a starting point to help painters at every level deepen their understanding and their toolboxes (literal and figurative) in order to create with greater ease and skill. As Casey reminds his students: ‘The purpose of knowledge is action.’