Book picks similar to
The Book of Black by Faye Dowling
non-fiction
art
occult
photography
Starving to Successful | The Fine Artist's Guide to Getting Into Galleries and Selling More Art
J. Jason Horejs - 2009
Written by J. Jason Horejs, owner of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ, Starving to Successful will give you pragmatic advice and concrete, actionable steps you can begin implementing immediately to become more successful in marketing your work to galleries.Gain insight into what a gallery owner is thinking as he or she reviews your portfolio. Understand why the most common approaches artists make to galleries are largely ineffective. Learn what most artists fail to do in preparing their work for sale.Starving to Successful will change the way you look at the artist/gallery relationship, and will set your art career on a new path.About the AuthorArt flows through Xanadu Gallery owner J. Jason Horejs veins. Second generation in the art business, (Horejs father is a nationally recognized oil painter John Horejs) Horejs life has always been filled with art. Though not interested in pursuing a life as an artist, Horejs fell in love with the business side of art at an early age. At age 12, the future gallery owner was employed by his father building custom canvas stretchers.In 1991, at the age of 17, Horejs began working for Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ, where he learned the gallery business from the ground up. Horejs handled logistics, shipping and installation, eventually working into a sales position at the western art gallery. Horejs worked in the gallery s Scottsdale and Jackson Hole, WY, locations.In 2001, Jason and his wife, Carrie, opened Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale. In spite of opening on September 11th into a completely changed art world, Horejs built the gallery into a successful venture, showing dozens of artists and selling to collectors from around the world, including major municipal and private collections.In 2008, Horejs developed a series of art marketing workshops designed to help artists better understand the gallery business and better prepare themselves to approach galleries. This series of workshops has helped hundreds of artists get organized to show and sell their work through galleries."I discovered," says Horejs, "there was very little information out there for the aspiring professional artist regarding the business side of art, especially in terms of the crucial relationship between the artists and the fine art gallery. Even artists who have graduated with master s degrees leave school having never heard a word about how to approach galleries."Horejs observes that artists approaching his gallery are making many of the same mistakes, not because their work isn t gallery-ready, but simply because they don t have a clear idea of how to proceed. Horejs designed his workshops working closely with his parents and other artists who have learned the ropes of working with galleries by trial and error. The clear-headed advice the gallery owner gives is designed to give the artists concrete steps they can take to prepare their work, research galleries and approach galleries for representation.
The Art of Perspective: The Ultimate Guide for Artists in Every Medium
Phil Metzger - 2007
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.
Beyond The Fray: Paramalgamation
Shannon LeGro - 2020
Michael Hopf; comes a collection of unexplained, nearly impossible to classify encounters with the strange, terrifying, and life-changing. Run-ins with goblins, creatures, and human-looking copies that don’t fit into a neat little box like Bigfoot or ghosts. This is a collection of some of the strangest and scariest stories ever told by the people who experienced them. Sit back, relax and we suggest you keep a light on.
How to See, How to Draw: Keys to Realistic Drawing
Claudia Nice - 2010
With Claudia's help, you can do it! In How to See, How to Draw, you will discover how to tap into your powers of observation, strengthen your hand-eye connection, and draw the world around you with new skill and accuracy. Just take it one step at a time.Claudia is an expert teacher, breaking down complex compositions into a series of achievable shapes and values that even beginners will understand. Through dozens of mini demonstrations, fun-to-do exercises and complete step-by-step instruction, you'll learn everything from basic drawing techniques to more challenging methods for rendering wonderfully rich, in-depth compositions.Her visual instruction details how to:Use a variety of drawing tools to suit your style and artistic intentLearn to let go of preconceived ideas so you can observe lines, shapes and spatial relationships as they actually areCreate strong compositions through comparison and proportional controlFind, fix and avoid common mistakes by using simple grids and guide linesUnderstand and work with perspective to create the illusion of depthReveal form through light and shadowExplore the potential of texture to create mood and movementClaudia's drawings illuminate a range of subjects, including portraits, landscapes, animals and still life. You can practice using her reference photos and drawings, or you can apply her exercises to your own subjects.Start today, Claudia's way! Following her masterful guidance, you'll see the world through new eyes and draw better than you ever have before.
Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures & Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs
Paul Koudounaris - 2013
The fully articulated skeleton of a female saint, dressed in an intricate costume of silk brocade and gold lace, withered fingers glittering with colorful rubies, emeralds, and pearls this is only one of the specially photographed relics featured in Heavenly Bodies. In 1578 news came of the discovery in Rome of a labyrinth of underground tombs, which were thought to hold the remains of thousands of early Christian martyrs. Skeletons of these supposed saints were subsequently sent to Catholic churches and religious houses in German-speaking Europe to replace holy relics that had been destroyed in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The skeletons, known as the catacomb saints, were carefully reassembled, richly dressed in fantastic costumes, wigs, crowns, jewels, and armor, and posed in elaborate displays inside churches and shrines as reminders to the faithful of the heavenly treasures that awaited them after death. Paul Koudounaris gained unprecedented access to religious institutions to reveal these fascinating historical artifacts. Hidden for over a century as Western attitudes toward both the worship of holy relics and death itself changed, some of these ornamented skeletons appear in publication here for the first time."
How to Paint Fast, Loose and Bold: Simple Techniques for Expressive Painting
Patti Mollica - 2018
In this book, artist and workshop teacher Patti Mollica walks you through surprisingly simple and efficient strategies for achieving that kind of powerful composition, whatever your subject. Complete with timed exercises and start-to-finish painting demonstrations, this book is for any artist who feels overwhelmed by where to start or daunted by the urge to paint everything in sight. Patti Mollica's mindful approach will lead you to better, bolder results, as well as greater confidence and joy in the process. So load your palette with ample paint, grab some fat brushes and get ready to paint fast, paint loose, paint bold. Start with a strong, simple value statement Get expressive with color Be brave with your brushwork 5 technique exercises 5 start-to-finish painting demonstrations Paint fearlessly!
Horror Cinema
Jonathan Penner - 2008
Depicting deep-rooted, even archetypal fears, while at the same time exploiting socially and culturally specific anxieties, cinematic horror is at once timeless and utterly of its time and place. This exciting visual history, which includes unique images from the David Del Valle archive, examines the genre in thematic, historical, and aesthetic terms, breaking it down into the following fundamental categories: Slashers & Serial Killers; Cannibals, Freaks & Hillbillys; Revenge of Nature & Environmental Horror; Sci-fi Horror; The Living Dead; Ghosts & Haunted Houses; Possession, Demons & Evil Tricksters; Voodoo, Cults & Satanists; Vampires & Werewolves; and The Monstrous-Feminine. Among the many films featured are classics such as Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alien, The Exorcist, Dracula, and The Wicker Man.
All about Saul Leiter
Saul Leiter - 2017
This collection takes a Japanese perspective into the secrets of his appeal, from his life philosophy and lyricism to masterful colors and compositions reminiscent of ukiyo-e. Some two hundred works—including early street photographs, images for advertising, nudes, and paintings—cover Leiter’s career from the 1940s onward, accompanied by quotations from the artist himself that express his singular worldview. Saul Leiter was born in 1923 in Pittsburgh. He pioneered a painterly approach to color photography in the 1940s and produced covers for fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar before largely withdrawing from public attention in the 1980s. The publication of his first collection, Early Color, by Steidl in 2006 inspired an avid “rediscovery” that has since led to worldwide exhibitions and the release of a documentary, In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter (2014). He died in New York in 2013.size: 210 × 148 × 28 mmbinding: softcoverlanguage: english/japanese
Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, And 5 Generations Of American Experimental Composers
William Duckworth - 1995
Herein, John Cage recalls the turning point in his career; Ben Johnston criticizes the operas of his teacher Harry Partch; La Monte Young attributes his creative discipline to a Morman childhood; and much more. The results are revelatory conversations with some of America's most radical musical innovators.
You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination
Katharine Harmon - 2003
But maps need not just show continents and oceans: there are maps to heaven and hell; to happiness and despair; maps of moods, matrimony, and mythological places. There are maps to popular culture, from Gulliver's Island to Gilligan's Island. There are speculative maps of the world before it was known, and maps to secret places known only to the mapmaker. Artists' maps show another kind of uncharted realm: the imagination. What all these maps have in common is their creators' willingness to venture beyond the boundaries of geography or convention.You Are Here is a wide-ranging collection of such superbly inventive maps. These are charts of places you're not expected to find, but a voyage you take in your mind: an exploration of the ideal country estate from a dog's perspective; a guide to buried treasure on Skeleton Island; a trip down the road to success; or the world as imagined by an inmate of a mental institution. With over 100 maps from artists, cartographers, and explorers, You are Here gives the reader a breath-taking view of worlds, both real and imaginary.
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.
The Photographer's Guide to Yosemite
Michael Frye - 2000
An indispensable and handy resource for anyone who wants to take better pictures in Yosemite and elsewhere.
Death: A Graveside Companion: A Graveside Companion
Joanna Ebenstein - 2017
Throughout the centuries, humanity has sought to understand this sobering thought through art and ritual. The theme of memento mori informs medieval Danse Macabre, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Renaissance paintings of dissected corpses and “anatomical Eves,” Gothic literature, funeral effigies, Halloween, and paintings of the Last Judgment. Deceased ancestors are celebrated in the Mexican Day of the Dead, while the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead to secure their afterlife.A volume of unprecedented breadth and sinister beauty, Death: A Graveside Companion examines a staggering range of cultural attitudes toward death. The book is organized into themed chapters: The Art of Dying, Examining the Dead, Memorializing the Dead, The Personification of Death, Symbolizing Death, Death as Amusement, and The Dead After Life. Each chapter begins with thought-provoking articles by curators, academics, and journalists followed by gallery spreads presenting a breathtaking variety of death-related imagery and artifacts. From skulls to the dance of death, statuettes to ex libris, memento mori to memorabilia, the majority of the images are of artifacts in the astonishing collection of Richard Harris and range from 2000 BCE to the present day, running the gamut of both high and popular culture.Table of Contents1. The Art of Dying2. Examining the Dead3. Memorializing the Dead4. The Personification of Death5. Symbolizing Death6. Death as Amusement7. The Dead After LifeEssays: Death in Ancient and Present-Day Mexico, Eva Aridjis,The Power of Hair as Human Relic in Mourning Jewelry - Karen Bachmann, Medusa and the Power of the Severed Head, Laetitia Barbier, Anatomical Expressionism, Eleanor Crook, Poe and the Pathological Sublime, Mark Dery, Eros and Thanatos, Lisa Downing, Death-Themed Amusements, Joanna Ebenstein, The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, Bruce Goldfarb, Theatre, Death and the Grand Guignol, Mel Gordon, Holy Spiritualism, Elizabeth Harper, Playing dead – A Gruesome Form of Amusement, Mervyn Heard, The Anatomy of Holy Transformation, Liselotte Hermes da Fonseca, Collecting Death, Evan Michelson, Art and Afterlife: Ethel le Rossignol and Georgiana Houghton, Mark Pilkington, The Dance of Death, Kevin Pyle, Art, Science and the Changing Conventions of Anatomical Representation, Michael Sappol, Spiritualism and Photography, Shannon Taggart, Playing with Dead Faces, John Troyer, Anatomy Embellished in the Cabinet of Frederik Ruysch, Bert van de Roemer
The Art of Robert E. McGinnis
Robert McGinnis - 2014
McGinnis began his career in 1947 as a cartoonist, and produced his first cover illustrations for 1956 issues of the magazines True Detective and Master Detective. Then in 1958, he painted his first paperback book cover, and from that day forward his work was in demand. The emergence of the “McGinnis Woman”—long-legged, intelligent, alluring, and enigmatic—established him as the go-to artist for detective novels. His work appeared on Mike Shayne titles and the Perry Mason series, and he produced 100 paintings for the Carter Brown adventures. Yet McGinnis became famous for his work in other genres as well: espionage, romance, historicals, gothics, and Westerns. McGinnis’s first major magazine assignments were for The Saturday Evening Post, and his work has graced the pages of Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, Good Housekeeping, Guideposts, and others. McGinnis women frequently cropped up in the men’s magazines of the ’60s and ’70s. His first movie poster was for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with an iconic rendering of Audrey Hepburn. Almost instantly, his poster artwork could be seen everywhere—in theaters, on billboards, in newspapers, and even on soundtrack albums. His work for Hollywood became a who’s-who, with posters for James Bond, The Odd Couple, Woody Allen, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and many more. Some of his most ambitious works have been his gallery paintings, often depicting stunning American landscapes, vast Western vistas, and of course, beautiful women. The Art of Robert E. McGinnis collection reveals the full scope and beauty of the work of a true American master—one whose legacy continues today.
Of Moose and Men: A Skewed Look at Life in Alaska
A.E. Poynor - 1999
E. Poynor. For less than twenty percent of what you paid for that grande maple-choco-frappa-machacino latte you'll spew out your nose while reading this book, you can learn about an aspect of Alaska most people never think about: everyday life in Alaska. Of Moose and Men: A Skewed Look at Life in Alaska provides a unique insight into the Land of the Midnight Sun, where laughing about the trials unique to the country is better than giving up.