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.

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics: How to Create and Sell Comic Books, Manga, and Webcomics


Comfort Love - 2015
    With advances in technology, the increased connectivity of social media, and the ever-increasing popularity of the comics medium, successful DIY comics publishing is within your reach. With The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics, creators/instructors Comfort Love and Adam Withers provide a step-by-step breakdown of the comics-making process, perfect for any aspiring comics creator. This unprecedented, in-depth coverage gives you expert analysis on each step—writing, drawing, coloring, lettering, publishing, and marketing. Along the way, luminaries in the fields of comics, manga, and webcomics—like Mark Waid, Adam Warren, Scott Kurtz, and Jill Thompson—lend a hand, providing “Pro Tips” on essential topics for achieving your comics-making dreams. With the insights and expertise contained within these pages, you’ll have everything you need and no excuses left: It’s time to make your comics!

Figure Drawing: Design and Invention


Michael Hampton - 2009
    This book emphasizes a simplified understanding of surface anatomy, in order to clarify the mechanics of the figure, facilitate invention, and ultimately create a skill-set that can be successfully applied to other media. In addition, this book focuses very strongly on practical usage, making sure the artist is able to assimilate the steps presented here into a cohesive working process. (Fourth printing, September 2011)

Botanical Line Drawing: 200 Step-by-Step Flowers, Leaves, Cacti, Succulents, and Other Items Found in Nature


Peggy Dean - 2017
    It's used widely among artists of many types with both fine and bold lines, creating different variations. Botanical Line Drawing teaches you how to start with the simplest doodles, building into more elaborate, delicate illustrations. This book focuses on the extremely popular subject matter of the natural world and includes flowers, leaves, succulents, houseplants, trees, branches, mushrooms, and more. These simple line drawings will allow you to branch out and have fun with your own personal style, as well as inspire you to add flourishes to other projects.

Drawing for older children & teens


Mona Brookes - 1991
    Now the author of America's best-selling art instruction book for young children provides a complete course for older children, teens and adult beginners.In Part I, you'll discover the many different styles you can choose to draw in and how to develop your own personal style.In Part II, you'll discover a unique way of seeing that allows you to draw any shape you observe. You'll learn the basics (from buying art supplies to planning your compositions) and all the good stuff- proportion, scale, perspective, contrast shading and special effects. Lastly, Mona provides essential information on drawing the human form, animals, still, landscapes, and buildings.It's all here. Now nothing can prevent you from discovering the joys of drawing. Open this book and you'll see what creative possibilities await you! Special NoteDrawing For Older Children & Teens includes special sections for art teachers and educators.

Sketching from the Imagination: An Insight into Creative Drawing


3dtotal Publishing - 2013
    Whether scribbled in a sketch pad or on a napkin, concepts are a way for artists to develop their skills and discover interesting shapes and forms that can be developed into their next masterpiece. In Sketching from the Imagination, 50 talented traditional and digital artists have been chosen to share their sketchbook works, from doodled concept sketches to fully rendered drawings. A visually stunning collection packed full with useful tips, Sketching from the Imagination is an excellent value resource for concept design to inspire artists of all abilities.

If You Can Doodle, You Can Paint: Transforming Simple Drawings into Works of Art


Diane Culhane - 2017
    Even if you don't consider yourself a doodler, the exercises and techniques in this book will give you a fun way to tap into your personal style.The invitation starts with a pencil as you work through doodle assignments. Eventually, you will learn how to size up and combine these doodles into larger compositions. Then, you will begin mixing it up with watercolor paints and, finally, with acrylic paints.In If You Can Doodle, You Can Paint we will:Dig for treasure/doodleObserve, arrange, and studyMake folded books for doodle-ready surfacesCopy your images with hand/eye coordinationScan and enlarge your doodlesAdd color combinations with colored pencil and acrylic paintCreate compositional grid paintings, andCreate a large complete painting!So what are you waiting for? Grab some pens and paints and get creative!

The Art of Alice: Madness Returns


Dave Marshall - 2011
    Eleven years later, McGee returns with a sequel just as groundbreaking as his critically acclaimed classic - Alice: Madness Returns!Just in time for Alice: Madness Returns, Dark Horse and Spicy Horse Games invite Alice fans to take a journey through the wonderland of American McGee's imagination for an unprecedented look at this creation of this magnificent and disturbing world. Featuring an introduction by McGee, The Art of Alice: Madness Returns offers an intimate look into the stunning and terrifying artwork behind this blockbuster reinterpretation of Lewis Carroll's enduring masterpiece.

The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing: A Contemporary Master Reveals the Secrets of Drawing the Human Form


Anthony Ryder - 1999
    In other words, to observe and draw what we actually see, rather than what we think we see. When it comes to drawing the human figure, this means letting go of learned ideas and expectation of what the figure should look like. It means carefully observing the interplay of form and light, shape and line, that combine to create the actual appearance of human form. In The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing, amateur and experienced artists alike are guided toward this new way of seeing and drawing the figure with a three-step drawing method.The book's progressive course starts with the block-in, an exercise in seeing and establishing the figure's shape. It then build to the contour, a refined line drawing that represents the figure's silhouette. The last step is tonal work on the inside of the contour, when light and shadow are shaped to create the illusion of form. Separate chapters explore topics critical to the method: gesture, which expresses a sense of living energy to the figure; light, which largely determines how we see the model; and form, which conveys the figure's volume and mass. Examples, step-by-steps, and special "tips" offer helpful hints and practical guidance throughout.Lavishly illustrated with the author's stunning artwork, The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing combines solid instruction with thoughtful meditations on the art of drawing, to both instruct and inspire artists of all levels.

Sketch Your World: Essential Techniques for Drawing on Location


James Hobbs - 2014
    The creative possibilities are as unlimited as the world around you!

Print Liberation: The Screen Printing Primer


Jamie Dillon - 2008
    Even if you're starting out in a scary basement or in the tiny bathroom in your cramped apartment with a $40 budget, Print Liberation will show you everything you need to know to get started. And if you're already in a rented studio with a few bucks to spend, this book can help you turn screen printing into your personal art or business.Seriously, this is a completely comprehensive how-to guide. You'll start by learning the history of the craft accompanied by graphic illustrations. Then, step-by-step photographs walk you through the ins and outs of all the main screen-printing techniques, including printing on dimensional surfaces, such as walls and goats (although the latter is not recommended). You'll even find advice about how to turn screen printing into a money-making venture, either by selling your work through galleries or by offering your services locally to make posters, T-shirts and anything else people might need.You can do it. Your imagination is your only limitation.

An Introduction to Acrylics (DK Art School)


Ray Campbell Smith - 1993
    But every volume of The DK Art School gives the reader the precise information needed to create a delightful work of art.

Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design


Dorr Bothwell - 1977
    In composition, it recognizes the separate but equally important identity of both a shape and its background.Since their introduction in the West, the intriguing exercises associated with Notan have produced striking results in every branch of Western art and design. This book, by two American artists and teachers who made an intensive study of Notan, was the first basic book on the subject in the West, and it remains one of the definitive texts. Through a series of simple exercises, it places the extraordinary creative resources of Notan easily within the grasp of Western artists and designers.Clearly and concisely, the authors demonstrate Notan's practical applications in six problems of progressive difficulty — creative exercises that will fascinate artists and designers of every calling and level of expertise. Along with these exercises, the book includes many illustrations of the principle of Notan, among them images as diverse as a sculpture by David Smith, a Samoan tapa cloth, a Museum of Modern Art shopping bag, New England gravestone rubbings, Japanese wrapping paper, a painting by Robert Motherwell, a psychedelic poster, and a carved and dyed Nigerian calabash. Painters, sculptors, potters, jewelry, and textile designers, architects, and interior designers all will discover — or rediscover — in these pages an ancient principle of composition that can help them meet creative challenges with fresh new perspective.

The Human Figure


John H. Vanderpoel - 1958
    Every element of the body (such as the overhang of the upper lip; the puckering at the corners of the mouth; the characteristic proportions of the head, trunk, limbs, etc.; the tension between connected portions of the body; etc.) is carefully and concisely pointed out in the text. Even more helpful are the 430 pencil and charcoal drawings that illustrate each feature so that you are, in effect, shown what to look for by a master teacher. The result is the only art instruction book which not only illustrates details of the body but directs your attention at every stage to a host of subtle points of shading, curvature, proportion, foreshortening, muscular tension, variations due to extreme age or youth, and both major and minor differences in the structure and representation of the male and female figure. Comprehensive discussions and drawings cover the eyes; nose, mouth and chin; ear; head, trunk, back and hips; neck, throat, and shoulder; shoulder and arm; hand and wrist; leg; foot; the complete figure; and other interdependent groups of structures. This is the human figure as the artist, art student, and art teacher must know it in order to avoid many deceptive errors unfortunately common in much modern portraiture, painting, and illustrative art.

Doodles Unleashed: Mixed-Media Techniques for Doodling, Mark-Making & Lettering


Traci Bautista - 2012
    Work with an arsenal of creative tools, from markers, pencils and pens to stamps, stencils, inks and paints, to find unique, intuitive ways to make your mark.Inside Doodles Unleashed, you'll learn how to:Doodle spontaneous marks, repetitive patterns, stylistic scrawls and moreCreate textured and doodled backgrounds for your mixed-media artUse photographs, vintage fabric and typography as inspirations for doodlingWork with unusual tools--skewers, toothpicks, sequin waste and more--to create surprising and unique marksDevelop a doodling style that's all your ownAnd if that isn't enough, you'll find links for additional downloads and video tutorials sprinkled throughout the pages, for even more doodle insight.With over 60 doodling techniques and exercises, you'll find plenty of ways to unleash your creative spirit and make your mark!