My Favorite Things


Maira Kalman - 2014
    A pictorial index provides photographs of the actual objects and a short description of them, enhancing the reading experience.As it speaks to the universal experience and importance of beloved objects in our lives—big and small, famous and private—this unique work is a fresh way of examining and understanding our society, history, culture, and ourselves.

The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook


Alan Lee - 2005
    These images would prove so powerful and evocative that they would eventually define the look of Peter Jackson's movie trilogy and earn him a coveted Academy Award.The book is filled with more than 150 of his sketches and early conceptual pieces showing how the project progressed from idea to finished art. It also contains a selection of full-page paintings reproduced in full color, together with numerous examples of previously unseen conceptual art produced for the films and many new works drawn specially for this book.The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook provides a fascinating insight into the imagination of the man who painted Tolkien's vision, first on the page and then in three dimensions on the movie screen. It will also be of interest to many of the thousands of people who have bought the illustrated Lord of the Rings as well as to budding artists who want to unlock the secrets of book illustration.

The Simple Secret to Better Painting


Greg Albert - 2003
    It's an insightful artistic philosophy that boils down the many technical principles of composition into a single master rule that's easy to remember and apply: Never make any two intervals the same.You can make every painting more interesting, dynamic and technically sound by varying intervals of distance, length and space, as well as intervals of value and color. The rule also applies to balance, shape and the location of your painting's focal point.Greg Albert illustrates these lessons with eye-opening examples from both beginning and professional artists, including Frank Webb, Tony Couch, Kevin Macpherson, Charles Reid, Tony Van Hasselt and more.You'll discover that the ONE RULE is the only rule of composition you need to immediately improve your work - the moment your brush touches the canvas.

Compendium of Acrylic Painting Techniques: 300 Tips, Techniques and Trade Secrets


Gill Barron - 2014
    Learn how to choose and mix colors, and create a multitude of effects using only one set of tubes. Discover how to make your own equipment, set up a "studio" space, and use household materials to save money. Beginners can follow processes stage-by-stage, while more experienced artists can dip in and out for help with specific problems. A unique section on how to develop your art and take it to a wider public is full of professional secrets which can bring you success much more quickly. “Try it” and “Fix it” panels placed throughout the book suggest ways of practicing and developing new skills, and avoiding or correcting common painting errors.

Charles Harper's Birds and Words


Charley Harper - 2008
    Reissue of the collectible Charley Harper classic, which pairs his beautiful paintings with poetic commentary.

Beethoven: The Universal Composer


Edmund Morris - 2005
    His biography of Beethoven, one of the most admired composers in the history of music, is above all a study of genius in action, of one of the few giants of Western culture. Beethoven is another engaging entry in the HarperCollins’ “Eminent Lives” series of biographies by distinguished authors on canonical figures.

Raphael: 1483-1520


Christof Thoenes - 1999
    Though Raphael painted many important works in his Florence period, including his famous Madonnas, it was his mature work in Rome that cemented his place in history, most notably the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican featuring his School of Athens and Triumph of Religion murals. This overview traces the life's work of this Renaissance master who achieved the height of greatness in only two decades of creation and whose influential work paved the way for the Mannerist and Baroque movements.

The Art of Discworld


Terry Pratchett - 2004
    It's a world bursting with magic, a land of contrasts and extremes, from the bustling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, the oldest city on the Disc (now ruled with an iron hand in a velvet glove by the Patrician, Lord Vetinari), to the ancient empire of Klatch, where there are fifteen words for assassination. There's the mysterious continent XXXX, or Foureks, about which nothing anyone has ever heard is really an exaggeration, the tiny kingdom of Lancre and the dark country of Uberwald, where things do go bump in the night. And then there are the inhabitants: the witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat Garlick (now a Queen, of course). There are wizards galore, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the Librarian, Rincewind, the Bursar . . . there are the History Monks and the ancient Vampyre families. There are great heroes, like Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde, Sam Vimes, Captain Carrot and the men* of the City Watch . . . and there are the ordinary folk like Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Foul Ole Ron, the Igors . . . and there's Death.The Discworld might have started out in the imagination of its Creator, Terry Pratchett, but over the past 30 or more books, it has taken on a life of its own.Here, gathered together for the first time, is artist Paul Kidby's own voyage through the Disc, in glorious color and intricate black and white: a cornucopia of characters that have won the hearts of millions of adoring readers the world over:Here is The Art of Discworld. werewolves, zombies, gargoyles, dwards - in fact, menof the Watch are actually few and far between these days.

Picasso


Carsten-Peter Warncke - 1991
    He had good grounds for the confidence palpable in his statement, for in the history of 20th century art, his name stands out over all the others. In Picasso's paintings, drawings, lithographs, ceramics, and sculptures, he was tirelessly inventive and innovative, exhibiting an aesthetic bravado that kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries. From subject matter to new forms and techniques to new media, Picasso got there first. The Spanish artist's enormous output, from the eight-year-old's beginnings to the late work of a man of ninety-one, is surely one of the most diverse and creatively energetic in the whole history of art, and it is no exaggeration to see him as the genius of the century. Carsten-Peter Warncke's study is a thorough review of Picasso's entire oeuvre, from the early Blue and Rose Periods, through the analytic and synthetic cubism and classicist phase all the way up to the art of the old savage Picasso. Our study of Picasso, the most exhaustive record of his work to date, contains almost 1500 illustrations'from his earliest drawings to the master's very last painting. Extensive bibliography section as well as illustrated section about Picasso's life and work Index of Names

The Sketchbook Project World Tour


Steven Peterman - 2015
    Bursting with color, vivid imagery, and bouts of whimsy mixed with deeply intimate insights, the sketchbooks capture the texture of personal experience in a dizzying variety of illustrative styles and layouts that run the gamut from street portraits to stream-of-consciousness doodles, comics, and pop-ups. The Sketchbook Project World Tour presents the most compelling, surprising, and visually stunning examples from this one-of-a-kind artistic treasury.

Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up


Claire Wilcox - 2018
    Her instantly recognizable work draws extensively on her life and her extraordinarily personal reflections upon it.   On Kahlo’s death, her husband, Diego Rivera (1886–1957), ordered that her most private possessions be locked away until 15 years after his death. The bathroom in which her belongings were stored in fact remained unopened until 2004. Through this incredible archive, Frida Kahlo’s Wardrobe gives readers a unique window into Kahlo’s life. It will focus on the personal, combining her prosthetics, jewelry, and clothes with self-portraits, diary entries, and letters to build an intimate portrait of the artist through her possessions, setting this in the context of her political and social beliefs.

The Artist's Handbook


Ray Campbell Smith - 1987
    The Artist's Handbook is packed with information on the traditional art methods of drawing, painting, and printmaking together with significant modern art techniques such as digital photography, digital printing, and digital image manipulation. Encompasses all the tools, materials and skills of the artist's craft. This is the definitive reference guide for amateurs and proficient, conventional and progressive artists alike.

Rothko: The Color Field Paintings


Christopher Rothko - 2017
    This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949–1970) alongside essays by Rothko's son, Christopher Rothko, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop. Featuring illuminating details about Rothko's life, influences, and legacy, and brimming with the emotional power and expressive color of his groundbreaking canvases, this essential volume brings the renowned artist's luminous work to light for both longtime Rothko fans and those discovering his work for the very first time. A textured case and large-scale tip-on on the front cover round out this sumptious package.

Artists and Their Cats


Alison Nastasi - 2015
    . . so many great artists have shared one very special love: the companionship of cats. Gathered here for the first time are behind-thescenes stories of more than 50 famous artists and their feline friends. From Salvador Dali's pet ocelot Babou to John Lennon and Yoko Ono's menagerie of cats, including Salt (who was black) and Pepper (who was white), Artists and Their Cats captures these endearing friendships in charming photographs and engaging text, and reveals what creative souls and the animals best known for their independent spirits have in common. In this clever compilation, art aficionados will discover a softer side of their favorite artists, and cat lovers will enjoy a whole new way to celebrate their favorite furry friends.

A Life of Picasso, Vol. 1: The Early Years, 1881-1906


John Richardson - 1991
    "To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors my life." Richardson, who lived near the artist in Provence for ten years and became a trusted friend, was able to observe and record this phenomenon at first hand. Later, Picasso's widow continued to give Richardson access to the artist's studios and storerooms. This close personal friendship and the privilege of working in hitherto inaccessible archives make Richardson uniquely qualified to write the artist's life, rescuing his renown from sensationalist legend and specialist pleading and analyzing anew the traumas and obsessions that triggered his explosive genius.Richardson is the first biographer to make sense of the myriad contradictions that leave so many statements about Picasso's nature equally true in reverse. The artist's ambivalence is one of the author's central themes. At last we are able to see how his courage and terror misogyny and tenderness, generosity and thrift, superstition and skepticism, cynicism and sentiment, are reflected in the conflicts and paradoxes in his work.Richardson's eye is finely attuned to the complexities of Picasso's art, and his extensive knowledge of cultural history enables him to show how Picasso plundered the art of the past, the imaginations of his poet friends, the beliefs of mystics and magi, to create a revolutionary new synthesis. The author's evocation of Picasso's ferocious ego, demonic loves and hates and black fears is the more absorbing for its terse and lively prose and freedom from jargon.This first volume of Richardson's prodigiously detailed and documented four-volume study takes Picasso to the age of twenty-five. It reveals how the adolescent Picasso struggled, through determination and study, to escape the shadow of his father's artistic failures. It describes his precocious success in Barcelona and Paris and the period of rejection and despair that followed. We watch Picasso transform the prostitutes of the Saint-Lazare prison into Blue period madonnas and, later, the performers of the Montmartre circuses into Rose period harlequins. Volume I culminates in Picasso's dawning perception of himself as the messiah of the modern movement.Some nine hundred illustrations, many of them unfamiliar, enable the reader to follow Picasso's mesmerizing development in images as well as words.