While I personally do not consider myself to be a necessarily "realist" painter, I will nonetheless seek out a variety of books, including ones on realism. Still, I found the book to be surprisingly pleasant to read despite it containing mostly technical information. The key points that I've loved: - explaining the complexities of light transmission, refraction, and reflection - "You are always painting light" - having a full, lightfast pigment table for traditional painting (& thus, being able to kind of re-create it digitally) - being very in-depth, without being extremely technical (very good recommendation for beginners!) - explaining each concept that could go into any possible piece

This list is non-exhaustive, of course, as I would hate to just explain the whole book in one review. The language is simply just light enough where it's super easy to pick up, which is wonderful! Additionally, I think I'll be keeping the ebook on me at all times; like a little portable dictionary of anything I might ever need or have to re-visit.