Cheap Paint by Number (Book) (William L. Bird Jr.) Price
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| AUTHOR: | William L. Bird Jr. |
| CATEGORY: | Book |
| MANUFACTURER: | Princeton Architectural Press |
| ISBN: | 1568982828 |
| TYPE: | American - General, Art, Art & Art Instruction, History, Paint-by-numbers, Painting, Popular Culture - General, Social aspects, Technique, Techniques - Painting, United States |
| MEDIA: | Paperback |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
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Customer Reviews of Paint by Number
The gorgeous displays and ads for the medium are compelling William Bird Jr's Paint By Number traces the history of a movement which swept across the country and created many a budding novice artist. Chapters provide plenty of color photo examples of a changing industry which recognized an unfulfilled desire in the common man to be an artist. The gorgeous displays and ads for the medium are compelling, even for the non-artist reader.
Decent but wrong length
Bird does a decent job summarizing this kitschy topic in a succinct manner. In a sense though the length of this book is its worst enemy. He could have either been even more brief and cut about 50% of it to focus on the main issues rather than repeating himself. Alternatively, he could have truly explored the characterization of the individuals behind the craze as well as probed the American psyche and increased the length by 50%. Straddling the middle, Paint By Numbers ends up being pleasant but vaguely dissatisfying.
A Fun Trip Down Memory Lane
This is a really neat-o! book.
It's a short book, beautifully illustrated with paint-by-number paintings on almost every page (including paintings completed by J. Edgar Hoover, Nelson Rockefeller, Ethel Merman, and others). There are also lots of photos of advertisements, packaging and promotional displays used to sell the kits. The author discusses Max Klein & Dan Robbins, the men who started the paint-by-number "craze", and some of the other artists who worked on the kits. Despite heavy criticism from the art community, the kits were enormously popular in many countries.
I used to love doing these kits when I was a kid in the '60's and '70's. It may not be "art" but if nothing else I think people learn a little something about colors, shading and composition while working on these kits.