Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces: A Mixed-Media Portrait Workshop


Jane Davenport - 2015
    Author Jane Davenport is a beloved artist and international workshop instructor known by her thousands of students and fans for her over-the-top, enthusiastic, happy, and encouraging style. In Drawing and Painting Beautiful Faces, Davenport guides you, step by step, through the foundations of drawing a face, developing successful features, creating skin tones, playing with bright colors, shading, highlighting, and much more as you learn to create amazing mixed-media portraits.With this elegantly designed guidebook, you will quickly master a variety of techniques in a variety ofmediums, including:PencilMarkerPenWatercolorAcrylic paintInkPastelEphemeraDrawing and Painting Beautiful Faces will have you dancing your way through the exercises. In no time at all, you will have a selection of beautifully faced portraits ready to view, display, or even sell to a fashion designer.

Ansel Adams: A Biography


Mary Street Alinder - 1996
    Here, Mary Street Alinder--who collaborated with Adams on his memoir and was his assistant in later life--is not reticent about the major emotional episodes in Adams's life, including his marriage and extramarital affairs, and his not-altogether-successful fatherhood. She explores the major artistic influences on his work and gives in-depth profiles of the significant figures in his circle. She also explains the technique and style Adams developed to obtain his unique vision, as well as his uneasiness at becoming a commodity. Ansel Adams: A Biography is an intimate and provocative portrait of the world's most famous photographer.

Problem Solving for Oil Painters: Recognizing What's Gone Wrong and How to Make it Right


Gregg Kreutz - 1986
    IdeaIs There a Good Abstract Idea Underlying the Picture?What Details Could be Eliminated to Strengthen the Composition?Does the Painting “Read”?Could You Finish Any Part of the Painting?ShapesAre the Dominant Shapes as Strong and Simple as Possible?Are the Shapes Too Similar?ValueCould the Value Range be Increased?Could the Number of Values be Reduced?LightIs the Subject Effectively Lit?Is the Light Area Big Enough?Would the Light Look Stronger with a Suggestion of Burnout?Do the Lights Have a Continuous Flow?Is the Light Gradated?ShadowsDo the Shadow Shapes Describe the Form?Are the Shadows Warm Enough?DepthWould the Addition of Foreground Material Deepen the Space?Does the Background Recede Far Enough?Are the Halftones Properly Related to the Background?SolidityIs the underlying Form Being Communicated?Is the Symmetry in Perspective?ColorIs There a Color Strategy?Could a Purer Color Be Used?Do the Whites Have Enough Color in Them?Are the Colors Overblended on the Canvas?Would the Color Look Brighter if it Were Saturated into its Adjacent Area?PaintIs Your Palette Efficiently Organized?Is the Painting Surface Too Absorbent?Are You Using the Palette Knife as Much as You Could?Are You Painting Lines When You Should Be Painting Masses?Are the EdgesDynamic Enough?Is There Enough Variation in the Texture of the Paint?

500 Cups: Ceramic Explorations of Utility and Grace


Suzanne J.E. Tourtillott - 2005
    The exciting pieces come from an international array of artists, each with a unique perspective. The stylishly varied collection has a little bit of everything: the cups range from handbuilt to wheel-thrown, practical to sculptural, round to square. Benjamin Schulman's "Stacked Teacup Set" takes a strictly functional approach, while Heather O'Brien's "Dessert Cups on Stand" focuses on aesthetic form rather than usefulness. Annette Gates' "Espresso Shot Cups with Rubies" has a surface design of simple abstract lines and dots of glaze and jewels. Some are whimsical, others starkly conceptual. Every one is a treat for the eye.

Make Good Art


Neil Gaiman - 2013
    He encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians, writers, and dreamers to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he encouraged them to make good art.The book Make Good Art, designed by renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd, contains the full text of Gaiman’s inspiring speech.

A Short Book About Art


Dana Arnold - 2015
    Introducing art in its international context, this accessible book explores core issues about how art is made, interpreted, and displayed, without any of the unnecessary terminology. Divided into themes, A Short Book About Art presents new ways of thinking about the relationship between artists and their work, as well as fresh comparisons between works of art from different periods and places. Thought-provoking and stimulating, it is the ideal companion for anyone who wants to learn about art without a dictionary in their hands.

Dynamic Light and Shade


Burne Hogarth - 1958
    Here is the first book on this essential subject, the product of years of study by one of the world's great teachers of drawing and an artist of international renown, Burne Hogarth.Hogarth begins with the simplist kind of light and shade, showing how a dark silhouette on white paper can communicate form and space. He then shows how the silhouette is transformed into three dimensions with the addition of minimal light - the highlight.Following these instructory chapters, Hogarth devotes a separate chapter to each of the given basic categories of light and shade: single-source light; double-source light; flat, diffused light; moonlight; and sculptural light. In these chapters Hogarth illustrates the effects of these different kinds of light on a variety of subjects and examines both natural and artificial light sources.Moving on to more complex lighting effects, Hogarth explains spatial light - how light and shade can create a sense of "near and far"; environmental light - the effects of weather, time of day, and the changing of seasons; textural light - how light reveals the surface qualities of forms that range from rough stone to silk and satin draperies; transparent light - the effects passing through transparent materials like glass and water, and translucent substances like moving water or sailcloth; fragmentation light - the disrupted light we see in such subjects as fire, rain, and flying snow; radiant light - the intense light we see when we look into the light source itself, which may range from the sun to a candle flame; and finally the various kinds of expressive light invented by the artist - such as the symbolic and mystic light of religious art, or the paterns of light and shade that convey a mood or a psychological state.Burne Hogarth illustrates every effect of light and shade with brilliant drawings in pencil, charcoal, carbon, pen and ink, and brush and ink, encouraging the reader to experiment with diverse drawing media.Dynamic Light and Shade is an essential volume for everyone who draws and paints.

Portal to Genius


Leslie Householder - 2009
    Follow Richard and Felicity who are at the end of their financial rope, Morgan who needs a medical miracle for his son, and Ray who needs to find $4.5 million dollars by Wednesday as they each discover their portals to genius. Built on the premise that the solution to every problem is just an idea away, Leslie Householder (award-winning best selling author of The Jackrabbit Factor: Why You Can) and Garrett B. Gunderson (New York Times best selling author of Killing Sacred Cows), bring you an experience you'll never forget through this brilliant work true to its name: Portal to Genius.

Hundertwasser


Harry Rand - 1991
    We need not walk far, because paradise is right around the corner." --Hundertwasser Friedrich Stowasser, born in Vienna in 1928, called himself Friedensreich Hundertwasser Regentag Dunkelbunt. True to the colorful variety of his names, he has pursued many activities as a painter, architect, and ecologist, and as "one who awakens identities." This presentation of Hundertwasser's work in all of its different facets is guided by the artist's own view of himself and his purpose. And, because his work is, by nature, virtually inseparable from his biography, his artistic and political actions, and equally so from the "stories" of his (ostensibly) private life, a vivid portrait of the artist takes shape before the reader's eyes. Excerpts from conversations between the author and the artist lend a sense of immediacy and authenticity to the narration.

What It Is


Lynda Barry - 2008
    What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry’s first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”

Rules for Modern Life: A Connoisseur's Survival Guide


David Tang - 2016
    Around every corner lies a potential faux pas waiting to happen. But if you've ever struggled for the right response to an unwelcome gift or floundered for conversation at the dinner party from hell, fear not: help is at hand.In Rules for Modern Life, Sir David Tang, resident agony uncle at the Financial Times, delivers a satirical masterclass in navigating the social niceties of modern life. Whether you're unsure of the etiquette of doggy bags or wondering whether a massage room in your second home would be de trop, Sir David has the answer to all your social anxieties - and much more besides.

The Art Spirit


Robert Henri - 1929
    While it embodies the entire system of his teaching, with much technical advice and critical comment for the student, it also contains inspiration for those to whom the happiness to be found through all the arts is important.No other American painter attracted such a large, intensely personal group of followers as Henri, whose death in 1929 brought to an end a life that has been completely devoted to art. He was an inspired artist and teacher who believed that everyone is vitally concerned in the happiness and wisdom to be found through the arts. Many of his paintings have been acquired by museums and private collectors. Among them are the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wichita Art Museum, and Yale University Art Gallery.

John Thompson's Easiest Piano Course - Part 1 - Book Only


John Thompson - 1982
    This comprehensive boxed set assembles Books 1-4 of this classic method. The books feature colorful, amusing characters and illustrations, and the four accompanying CDs contain backing tracks to make learning and practicing even more fun. This unique package features a built-in storage carton!

The Letters of a Post-Impressionist (Illustrated Edition)


Vincent van Gogh - 2012
    First published in this English translation in 1913.

The Life and Works of Vincent Van Gogh


Janice Anderson - 1994
    The quick brushstrokes of the Impressionists suited his temperament, as did his heavy use of impasto. This helpful volume shows many of van Gogh's best loved works, including the famous self-portrait with a Bandaged Ear, painted after he had cut off part of his ear in a fit of madness, Sunflowers, which were to him a symbol of power and beneficence, and The Starry Night, a painting which clearly expresses intensity and mental turbulence.