If you could only have one color theory DVD in your collection you'd be hard pressed to find a more thorough course than the one Richard Robinson has prepared for artists of all skill levels in his "Mastering Color" DVD.

A professional artist since 2001, Richard Robinson has been producing art video clips for years and his instructional website www.livepaintinglessons.com is very popular. After polling his viewers and students he found the majority wanted and needed instruction on using color, so he set about filling in his own gaps in knowledge on the subject.

This DVD is the result of his research.

The DVD booted right up on my Macbook Pro to a straight forward menu. Divided into eight (8) chapters, these are the same type of lectures you would receive while training in college for a career in the fine arts. In order, Richard covers Color Theory, Seeing Color, Describing Color, Value, Mixing Color, Manipulating Color, Color Harmony, and Light Effects. The content is thorough and I was surprised to find quite a few esoteric nuggets I didn't know or hadn't even considered when "seeing" my own art.

"Mastering Color" is a single DVD that runs 125 minutes and includes copious amounts of printable material for you to use when running through the lessons provided. Richard covers the ins and outs of light and color every artist and painter should know.

If you've ever wondered how artists who paint see and use color in creating their art, you can learn that here. Watercolorists, you can indeed use the material covered here to learn about color.

You will also pick up lots of techniques specific to oil or acrylic painting and most are replicable in the transparent realm of things.

The music used is latin-themed acoustic music from Stephen Duros (www.stephenduros.com) and works well with Richards warm voice as he tells you everything you could possibly want to know about what seeing and working in color in art is all about.

Included on the DVD are 240 printable pages (8 pdf files) featuring all of the concepts in the video with example art and still life geometries you can print out, cut, and assemble to aid in your studies and exercises.

You can also download these lessons with the links and passwords included on the DVD. The whole package is also available as a digital download.

We'll give this one 4 and a half stars and rate it as "excellent."