Painting Light With Colored Pencil by Cecile Baird (2005, Hardcover)

This is one of my all-time favorite colored pencil books -- and art books in general. Cecile Baird is one of the best colored pencil realists, with a particularly strong grasp of light and color. She demonstrates how she's created her fantastic paintings -- when colored pencil is used this heavily the result is a painting, not a drawing.

A good reproduction of her painting is shown, then a step by step demonstration taking one element of her large original work to let the student get a feel for how to render difficult subjects like transparent glass with reflections on it, light streaming into the shadow through it and what's behind it, or a candle, or a rose.

Cecile Baird also goes into composition and design principles. Like most good art books, this has an overview of basic good drawing principles and hers is well written. I would recommend this book to anyone from a total beginner to an expert who's struggling with how to get blue glass in a windowsill just right. I did the candle exercise and that broke a lifetime problem I had with rendering candlelight and firelight, I'm now painting flames of all kinds with confidence and accuracy after using this book.

If Cecile Baird came out with another title I'd buy it without hesitation. This book is one of the cornerstones of my art library. The fantastic rose on the cover is actually an enlargement of one rose in a bigger painting.