This work helps you learn to analyse paintings in terms of colour shapes of value, hue and intensity - the elements that make a painting. It also includes before/after examples to illustrate how use the rules for good composition.

    heroes to confront... elegant elves, shrewd sorcerers and dreaded demons to battle. Following on the wings of the ferociously popular DragonArt, this book shows you how to conjure up your own fantasy realms by drawing inspiration from fairy tales, legends and (if you dare) things that go bump in the night.Breathe the life into your beings by basing them upon fundamental human anatomy--proportions, facial expressions and gender-specific characteristics.Color-coded, step-by-step demonstrations (simple enough that even the dullest of dwarves could follow along!) show you how to create a sordid cast of creatures, including goblins, orcs, sprites, angels, mermaids, centaurs, vampires, werewolves, banshees and more.Accessorize each being by tailoring them with tusks, wings, hooves, daggers, armor and various apparel, from the fine garb of nobles to peasant rags.Copy each being as-is. Or, better yet, follow your own twisted imaginings to conjure up creatures from fantastic lands.

    The creator of "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," reveals the art of brilliant character design, backgrounds, and prop art in this lavishly detailed handbook that unveils the complex secrets behind the deceptively simple and universally loved Simpsons characters. With creative insights, artists' sketches, helpful insider hints, and step–by–step instructions, enter the imagination of "master doodler" Matt Groening and receive some professional "how–to" advice from many of the animators and directors who have made "The Simpsons" the longest–running animated show and situation comedy in television history. In our technological era when animation has become increasingly digitalized, this unique handbook records the genesis of some of the most extraordinary examples of the art of hand–drawn animated characters.

    In this comprehensive guide, Phil Metzger demystifies perspective, presenting it simply as a matter of mimicking the way we see--like the way a distant mountain appears blue, or a road seems to narrow in the distance.The Art of Perspective offers simple but powerful techniques for achieving a convincing illusion of depth and distance, whether it's a few inches in a still life or miles in a landscape.- Start simple, with atmospheric perspective and intuitive techniques, and gradually progress to linear perspective and more complex challenges such as stairways, curves and reflections. - Use the engaging, step-by-step demonstrations and exercises to try out each essential concept for yourself, making lessons clearer and more memorable. - Learn theories that apply to all mediums, with specific advice for achieving effects using acrylic, oil, watercolor and pencil. - Get the inside scoop on professional tricks and shortcuts that make perspective easier than ever! Forget everything you think you know (or don't know) about perspective. This book builds an easy-to-follow, ground-up understanding of how to turn a flat painting or drawing surface into a living, breathing, dimensional scene that lures viewers in. No matter how you look at it, it's the ultimate guide to perspective for artists of every medium and skill level.

    There are many animal drawing books out there, but none explain how to use the knowledge obtained from study in an actual trade craft. This book explores the methods, philosophies, and secrets of a top character designer in the animation industry when dealing with creating animal characters, both professional production samples and personal work make up the content.

    Beloved artist and teacher Claudia Nice leads you on an inspired journey through the great outdoors. With paints in hand, she shares with you her best techniques for creating landscapes that come alive with richness, depth and textured detail.Read this guide and start painting right away. As you follow engaging, step-by-step demonstrations and exercises, you'll learn to recreate the textural elements of a range of terrains and landscapes. Chapters include:Creative clouds and skiesMajestic mountains, hills and mesasTexturing trees, trunks and foliageRugged rocks and gritty gravelTransparent textures for rivers, falls and lakesFlowers of the fieldIn a special section, Claudia covers basic texturing techniques with mini demos using lines, dots, bruising, scribbling, spattering, blotting, printing, stamping and more. From paints and pens to sponges, leaves and facial tissue, you'll explore all kinds of fun and inventive ways to create amazing textures.And to help you put it all together, Claudia includes her masterful advice for creating compositions using reference photos, field sketches and your own creative license. Each demonstration features a large image of the completed landscape, so you can see exactly how Claudia's methods work - from start to finish.

    Now the New York Times writes that her canvases--multilayered, futuristic visual worlds where historical and fictional landscapes meet--"make history painting important again." Each one pulls from diverse sources, noteworthy among them Japanese manga, Chinese landscape art, Ethiopian illuminated books, Baroque engraving in the style of D�rer, graffiti and the geometric abstractions of Kazimir Malevich and Vasily Kandinsky. And they are often structured on architectural drawing, which appeals to Mehretu "because there is no way that you could make architecture that doesn't work." Plans for buildings are metaphors "for systems, for rational efforts to construct the world that we exist within, even though so many things happen in a very organic or irrational way." These angular architectural spaces swarm with organic forms, with communities marching to war, confronting systems and creating elaborate new civilizations. Human relationships unfold, interacting with the built and controlled world. Of her interest in these warring factions and in the "aggressive and forceful nature of history," Mehretu says that, "most of my personal ancestry comes from different cultures that, at one time or another, were at war." This is the first comprehensive monograph on a strong new talent in contemporary painting.

    But the boy also has a problem. Despite Jean's many protests, his father thinks Jean's hair is too beautiful to be cut short. This renowned artist loves to use his son as a model in many of his paintings, and he insists that Jean is still young enough to keep his hair long. Meanwhile, the other kids often tease Jean, which makes him quite angry--and well-meaning adults sometimes mistake Jean for a pretty girl, which annoys and embarrasses him. How can he convince his dad that he's old enough to have short hair? This gently amusing story for children is beautifully illustrated in a manner that resembles the painting style of Jean's illustrious father, and it includes several illustrations that are faithful copies of Renoir's paintings. Of course, the senior Renoir finally relents, and young Jean Renoir does get his hair cut. Still later as an adult, Jean becomes famous in his own right as a widely acclaimed film director.

    The sense of energy and expression that can be captured in mere strokes of charcoal, ink, pastel, marker or any of the other modest mediums proudly represented in this book is astounding.A glowing celebration of the art of drawing, "Strokes of Genius" features styles ranging from meticulous realism to imaginative flights of fancy, from lyrical sketches created in minutes to intricately layered renderings that took months to complete.Includes: 169 stand-out examples of the finest drawing being done today, selected from hundreds of submissions from around the world.An impressive range of styles, materials and techniques covering a wide array of subjects, including still life, the figure, animals, landscapes, portraits and more.Comments from the artists offer firsthand insight on the creation of each artwork, diverse perspectives on drawing, and fresh ideas and techniques.An incomparable source of inspiration and delight for artists and art lovers, "Strokes of Genius" contains hundreds of combined years of expertise, artistic breakthroughs and, above all, remarkable drawings that leave a lasting impression.

    With several major solo exhibitions in the last few years, including a traveling exhibition organized by the Detroit Institute of the Arts that debuts in fall 2007, Mehretu has captivated her audience with her ambitious large-scale wall installations that include a dizzying array of signs, symbols, and motifs worked into compositions that take as their point of departure architectural renderings and sketches. While known primarily as a painter, it is the artist’s drawings that drive her work; she produces scores of major drawings a year (while her output of paintings generally never exceeds ten in a given year.) Concerned with how individuals come to understand their place in the world–both metaphorically and physically–through their identification with different communities or their experience of different places, Mehretu has created a body of work that is as dynamic as the subjects with which she is engaged. In this book–the most comprehensive study of her exquisite drawings–the fullness of her ideas and explorations of form are considered.

    Unlike similar titles on the market, this book doesn't simply provide a collection of dogs for artists to re-create exactly. Instead, the book focuses on techniques specific to drawing accurate depictions of dogs and puppies-from creating a variety of fur types and features to achieving accurate proportions-so that artists can use the knowledge to render their own canine portraits. The book also includes a series of easy-to-follow, step-by-step projects showcasing a range of dog breeds, poses and props. This allows artists to practice their developing skills, guiding them from simple sketches through the study of various techniques to polished renderings.

    Unlike previous studies, which have focused on the built projects and considered the drawings only insofar as they illuminate those buildings, this book analyses his designs as an independent source of insight into the mechanisms of Michelangelo's imagination. Brothers gives equal weight to the unbuilt designs, and suggests that some of Michelangelo's most radical ideas remained on paper.Brothers explores the idea of drawing as a mode of thinking, using its evidence to reconstruct the process by which Michelangelo arrived at new ideas. By turning the flexibility and fluidity of his figurative drawing methods to the subject of architecture, Michelangelo demonstrated how it could match the expressive possibilities of painting and sculpture.

    You want to be able to understand an animal’s structure just by looking at it, even if you have never seen that kind before, and have a system to follow as you draw it. You want to understand how to draw any animal easily so that you end up with a realistic drawing that is full of life and captures the personality and character. In this set, you will get a straightforward technique to use what you already know about human anatomy to apply towards animal anatomy and tips on understanding more about the structure of the animal based on whether the animal is prey or predator, like eye placement, ears, and the structure of the feet

    Perusing the guide's biographies and photos of America's top caricature carvers, readers will become acquainted with 25 members, both active and emeritus, such as Marv Kaisersatt, Harold Enlow, Peter Ortel, and Pete LeClair. Each profile includes two original patterns viewed from different angles, complete with techniques and painting and finishing tips.

    The simple step-by-step instructions show how to draw animals, buildings, people and cartoons, and give tips on shading and perspective. From easier projects to more challenging ones, there is something for every aspiring artist.

    Developed at the tail end of the abstract expressionist movement, color field painting is distinguished by pure, unmodulated areas of color, flat, two-dimensional space, and large, often irregularly shaped canvases. The genre is often associated with American painting, but was actually embraced by an international group of artists. Four of the most exciting of those practitioners are the focus of this penetrating study. Michael Auping sees the work of each of these artists as representing a different stage in the development of abstract painting in the 1950s and 1960s. He comments, "To my mind Rothko draws back the curtains, if you will, on the opening up of this space. Newman emphatically `declares' an almost totemic space, while Fontana literally slices through the picture's plane with a razor, and Klein, as he pronounced it, leaps into the void." Illustrated with color images of the artists' seminal works, Declaring Space shows how each painter made his own individual mark in a new realm of abstract art.

    This title helps you learn how to draw assorted creatures from stories and fables. It includes background information on the subject being drawn. It covers a comprehensive range of popular subjects, with sections on material, composition, perspective and technique.

    Every time you pick up a pencil, a battle rages between the two sides of your brain: Your analytical brain, which wants to generalize and take shortcuts; and your visual brain, which sees it like it is.This innovative guide helps the "good guy" always win!Following the success of his first book, Painting with Your Artist's Brain (North Light Books), Carl Purcell shows that the secret to creating true-to-life renderings--and overcoming the most common drawing problems--is silencing your bossy logical nature and letting your artistic side do what it does best. Thirteen interactive exercises and 10 step-by-step demonstrations lead you on an in-depth exploration of essential drawing skills:seeing values correctlysearching for relationships of angle, size and positiondefining form with line and edgeexploring the relationship between objects and spacetying everything together with value patternsmaking the most of your sketchbookYou'll take the same observation-based approach whether you're drawing a pear, a portrait or a landscape. No subject will be beyond your reach, and you'll be amazed at your sudden mastery of drawing!

    What does that animal look like as it moves, bends, twists, jumps, runs? Simplified skeletons and an innovative new approach show how to look at an animal as a strangely built human with an odd posture--allowing the artist to draw animals by identifying with them. Hart’s step-by-step instructions and clear text mean true-to-life results every time, whether the subjects are dogs, cats, horses, deer, lions, tigers, elephants, monkeys, bears, birds, pigs, goats, giraffes, or kangaroos.

    From his intimate observations of everyday life to his richly envisioned biblical allegories, the Dutch master created moving, inspiring images that have captivated viewers across four centuries. This original collection offers an unusual perspective on the artist, consisting exclusively of his drawings—all in their original colors, and most of them in their original sizes.These acclaimed drawings date from the 1620s to the 1660s, spanning Rembrandt's prolific career and documenting his changes in style and focus. Superb examples from every genre of the artist's work include landscape drawings, figure studies, scenes from the Old and New Testaments, animal sketches, and several portraits, including a few of the self-images for which he is famed.Beautifully produced in a generous format on high-quality paper, this deluxe edition offers a rare variety of 116 works from more than twenty major European and American museums. Informative captions accompany each illustration.

    Before you know it, you'll be drawing Mario, Princess Peach, Donkey Kong, Samus Aran and many more of your favorite characters. So get comfortable and grab a pencil and some paper, because you are about to take off on a whole new adventure.

    Think of role-playing games, fantasy, and some of the most popular movies and novelsever created. Think of The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, Dragonslayer, Dungeons and Dragons. In Swords & Sorcery, author Bryan Baugh shows artists exactly how to create bold fantasy realms populated with fantasy characters both heroic (knights in armor, barbarians, wizards, warrior maidens, kings, princesses) and evil (sorcerers, orcs, trolls, black knights). And of course there are fantasy creatures like unicorns, war-dogs, dragons, giants, goblins, ogres, and demons, plus creatures from mythology such as Medusa, Minotaurs, Cyclops, and Pegasus. A good battle needs good weaponry, and here are catapults, battering rams, and castles bursting with battlements and other defenses. From the underlying anatomy of a warrior to the underlying mythology of today's stories, Swords & Sorcery has everything the artist needs to create a rich fantasy world.

    Beautiful Landscapes offers in-depth information on drawing landscapes in varied locales. Accomplished artist Diane Wright guides readers through the fundamentals of drawing in pencil, such as making basic strokes and using photo references, and on through 10 step-by-step projects featuring everything from a desert scene to a riverside landscape. As an added bonus, the book showcases landscapes from around the world, including scenes from Venice, the Netherlands, and Canada. With easy-to-understand information on tools and materials, basic strokes, shading techniques, and more, this 64-page book covers everything aspiring artists need to know to start creating their own masterful works of landscape art.