the books we cite
Sources
Every recreation guide on Apprentice is grounded in primary sources. When a step says "apply a grisaille underpainting using oil of copavia (Source 1)," Source 1 is a real chapter of a real book. These are those books.
We chose ten classical art-instruction texts spanning 1390 to 1920. All are public domain. Most are forgotten. Together they cover the working knowledge of a working painter from the Renaissance bench to the early-twentieth-century atelier — the actual technical lineage that produced almost every painting in our library.
Il Libro dell'Arte (The Book of the Art)
c. 1390 (Herringham translation, 1899)Cennino Cennini
focus
Egg tempera, fresco, gilding, pigment preparation
why we use it
The earliest surviving step-by-step manual for a Renaissance painter's workshop. Tells you what Giotto's apprentices actually did at the bench.
The Practice of Oil Painting
1910Solomon J. Solomon
focus
Direct painting from life, grisaille underpainting, glazing, scumbling
why we use it
Royal Academy training methods, written down. The most-cited book in our corpus — almost every recreation guide leans on it.
The Science of Painting
1892J.-G. Vibert
focus
Pigments, mediums, varnishes, conservation chemistry
why we use it
A French academic painter explaining the materials side of his craft with chemist precision. Names which pigments are stable, which fade, why.
The Practice and Science of Drawing
1913Harold Speed
focus
Mass drawing vs. line drawing, observation, training the eye
why we use it
The clearest articulation we have of how to actually learn to see. Quoted in our guides whenever underdrawing is the question.
The Elements of Drawing
1857John Ruskin
focus
Watercolour, observation from nature, drawing for honesty
why we use it
Ruskin's three-letter course teaching anyone to draw. Argumentative, opinionated, still right about most of it.
Composition
1899Arthur Wesley Dow
focus
Notan, line, color as compositional elements
why we use it
The textbook that taught Georgia O'Keeffe to think about pictures. Composition reduced to first principles.
Laws of Contrast of Colour
1839M.-E. Chevreul
focus
Simultaneous contrast, complementary pairs, color harmony
why we use it
The book the Impressionists read. Chevreul ran the Gobelins dye-works and worked out the perceptual physics of color side-by-side.
Theory of Colours
1810Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
focus
Color phenomenology, contrast, after-images, color as experience
why we use it
Not the chemistry of color — the experience of it. What it feels like to look at yellow next to violet. Painters care about this more than physicists do.
The Human Figure
1908John Henry Vanderpoel
focus
Figure construction, anatomical landmarks, drawing the body
why we use it
The standard atelier figure book for a century. Hands, heads, torsos — what to look for and how to render it.
Constructive Anatomy
1920George B. Bridgman
focus
Figure drawing through volume, mass, and movement
why we use it
Bridgman taught at the Art Students League for 45 years. This is what he taught. Norman Rockwell's anatomy book.
Beyond the ten books
The book corpus is the technical core. Around it we use a working set of Wikipedia pages — one per artist (around 2,200 of them), one per ~200 famous artworks, and pages for movements, techniques, and pigments. Wikipedia is for the named facts (a particular artist's training, a painting's provenance, the chemistry of vermilion). The ten books are for how a painter actually paints.
To see how the two are used together, read the methods page.