The Best Books about Landscape Art - A Review

As part of my new project - The Art of the Landscape - I'm going to be reviewing books about landscape art.
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You are very welcome to collaborate with this project and also contribute book reviews about landscape art books.

Subject to the quality and relevance of any book reviews submitted - via a comment to one of the blogs - the book review post and blog will receive a link from one or more websites - as detailed below:

• The Art of the Landscape Blog - my new blog set up specifically for this project
  
• The Art of the Landscape Ning community - membership is invitation only at present. One of the learning aims is to create a database of relevant links to good quality information.
  
• Making A Mark reviews
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  - where I summarise the book reviews done by other people
• The Best Books about Landscape Art which is developing a list about the best books about landscape art
  

Please note that spam will not be published.

One of the most popular art instruction books for landscape artists
Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting
by: John F. Carlson

Book Review - Two main themes

This Book Review of Books about Landscape Art has two main themes:

1. art instruction books - which are targeted at people who want to learn more about how to create landscape art
2. art history books - which focus more on the development of landscape art and famous landscape artists (past and present)

Review and rate - things to highlight and do in your book review

This is intended to be a collaborative project - and you are invited to review your favourite landscape art books.

You can read about lots of different approaches to reviewing books in my suggested guide to reviewing books which you can find here - How to write a book review

This is my suggested framework for a very basic system to use when reviewing. Do leave me a comment if you think it can be improved

If possible, it would be helpful if every review covers the following:

Review the book

1. Basics: State basic facts about the book: title, author, publisher; the intended target audience for the book.
   
2. Content: Express your opinion about the content and give reasons for your views.
3. Communication: Say how well the author gets the main messages across. Bottom line - Is it a good read? Did you absorb what s/he had to say?
4. Presentation: Does it look good / does it feel good / does the binding do a good job?
   
5. Value for Money: Is it good value for money?
6. Overall quality: Would you recommend it? If not, why not? If yes, who would most benefit from reading the book?
   

Rate your book!

Finally, after making it clear who you think the book is aimed at, try and decide whether it rates:
5 stars - go out and buy this book right now if you have the money. In your opinion, an essential book for anybody seriously interested in drawing and/or learning more about landscape art
4 stars - a seriously good book about landscape art; definitely one you want to own at some point - maybe one for the Christmas present list if you're broke
3 stars - good effort but nothing which really distinguishes it from other books. It's just this author's take on the basics. The sort of book which is good while you are reading it but doesn't stick in your memory.
2 stars - undistinguished in your view. For example: content may be a rerun of previously published books and/or remixed with a new front cover; presentation may not be particularly noteworthy.
1 stars - buying this book would damage your wallet but is unlikely to enhance either your knowledge, skills or enjoyment. It may also hurt your eyes! (Unfortunately there are a few of these out there - although I'm assuming we've probably weeded through a few of these without buying!)

At the end of all this we'll have a poll and try and work out which are the very best of the best books about landscape art!

Please leave a comment and share your views if:

• you've done a book review. (Please highlight your blog post and the relevant URL below.)
  
• You want to also highlight a relevant book review done by somebody else. (Please highlight your blog post and the relevant URL below.)
• If you've got a view about which is the best book about landscape art

The Best Books about Landscape Art

Do you want to learn about landscape art? Do you want to find out which which are the best books about painting landscapes? Do you want to know more about famous landscape artists? This site covers books - and book reviews - for people wanting to learn more about landscape art.