Oil: Landscapes with William Alexander (Learn to Paint Step by Step)

In this title, William Alexander invites you into his artistic world and shows you how to re-create a variety of beautiful landscapes in oil. After exploring tools and materials, he explores tips for various oil painting techniques as well as instructions for how to create special effects for landscape elements such as skies, trees, mountains, roads, clouds, and lakes. Following demonstrations that show how to develop an oil painting into a finished work of art using the unique Alexander Wet-on-Wet Technique, aspiring artists will discover how to create a beautiful finished painting in just one sitting. Best of all, you will find a wealth of beautiful landscape paintings to copy and admire!

William Alexander, born in East Prussia in 1915, began his art career painting murals and decorating carriages for the German aristocracy. Except for a few formal lessons at an art school in Canada, Alexander was a self-taught artist.

Alexander's love and enjoyment of painting took him on the road at age 50. He traveled throughout the United State and Canada with his wife, Margarete, teaching art and painting. During this time, he modified traditional oil painting methods by developing his own thick, rich paints. These paints allowed him to layer colors over one another without waiting for the first layer to dry.

These paints, with his specially designed tools, established the Alexander Wet-on-Wet Technique and enabled artists to complete an oil painting in one sitting. After appearing on numerous public television shows, Alexander became known as the "Happy Painter." He later moved with his wife to the mountains of Canada, amid the beautiful landscape he enjoyed painting so much. Alexander passed away in 1997.