I just two new books that I hope to be useful reads. The Critique Handbook is a smaller book that reads in small sections and has basic categories - a fast read for anyone looking to brush up on critique/viewing art skills! I am excited because I think that it is easy to get in the bad habit of letting work just affect you on a basis of "how does this make me feel or think" but works should be analyzed beyond that level. The book is broken down into a ton of subcategories like: realism versus abstraction, edges, line, color, scale, ground, space, material, process, meaning...and so on.

The other book is like a step off of the critique and seeing how those skills then transfer to paper. And why not step back in time and read it from one of the first, most popular critics who wrote about American art in its break-out years? Clement Greenberg has a series collection of his essays and published criticism - I chose vol. 3 (1950-56) because it spanned the years that art was beginning to boom in the US...and not to mention some of the artists who I adore that were coming into focus.