Can You Really Sell Painting You Create?

A Review of Paint Red Hot Landscapes That Sell: A Sure-Fire Way to Stop Boring and Start Selling Everything You Paint in Oils

I have to admit that it was the title that attracted me to Paint Red Hot Landscapes that Sell, by Canadian artist Mike Svob. I mean, who doesn’t want to paint landscapes that sell?

But that is really the point of the book – creating artwork that triggers, as Svob puts it, “the buying response.” Although there are a lot of really beautiful paintings here – Svob is very much a modern Impressionist – this isn’t your typical art instruction book. His often writes in short paragraphs or bullet points, with just enough information to get his point across. I personally am a fan of this style, because I pay more attention to the pictures than the words, but some people are turned off by it.

His advice is brief and direct: use this palette, prepare your canvas with these tricks, incorporate these components to attract buyers.

Aside from the overt commercialism, his advice is very good, and addresses some topics that I have not seen in many other oil painting books – the importance of controlling edges, making your darks really dark to achieve strong contrast (imagine chiaroscuro meets Monet)- I think these are the things that truly make a exciting painting.

Nonetheless, I believe you have to be an intermediate to advanced artist to get the most out of this instruction book. There are a number of demonstrations, but they are rather high-level. He shows you what the major steps look like, but not the many in-between steps that are so crucial to the beginner. And you have to have your decent drawing and composition skills to produce the fairly detailed dark value underpaintings his style requires.

But overall, this is a quite an interesting and thought-provoking oil painting book, so it gets my recommendation.

Can You Really Sell Painting You Create?