Hiroshige: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo


Melanie Trede - 1856
    Because they could be mass produced, ukiyo-e works were often used as designs for fans, New Year's greeting cards, single prints, and book illustrations, and traditionally they depicted city life, entertainment, beautiful women, kabuki actors, and landscapes. The influence of ukiyo-e in Europe and the USA, often referred to as Japonisme, can be seen in everything from impressionist painting to today's manga and anime illustration. This reprint is made from one of the finest complete original set of woodprints belonging to the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo.

Manga for the Beginner: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started Right Away!


Christopher Hart - 2008
    With Manga for the Beginner, anyone who can hold a pencil can start drawing great manga characters right away. Using his signature step-by-step style, Hart shows how to draw the basic manga head and body, eyes, bodies, fashion, and more. Then he goes way beyond most beginner titles, exploring dynamic action poses, special effects, light and shading, perspective, popular manga types such as animals, anthros, and shoujo and shounen characters. By the end of this big book, the new artist is ready to draw dramatic story sequences full of movement and life.

Other People's Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See


Bill Shapiro - 2007
    Titillating text messages. It's-not-you-it's-me relationship-enders. In Other People’s Love Letters, Bill Shapiro has searched America’s attics, closets, and cigar boxes and found actual letters–unflinchingly honest missives full of lust, provocation, guilt, and vulnerability–written only for a lover’s eyes. Modern love, of course, is not all bliss, and in these pages you’ll find the full range of a relationship, with its whispered promises as well as its heartache. But what at first appears to be a deliciously voyeuristic peek into other people’s most passionate moments, will ultimately reawaken your own desires and tenderness…because when you read these letters, you’ll find the heart you’re looking into is actually your own.• "i think UR great. wanna have wine & Tequila again sometime?"• "I can't believe you're real, and I think about you constantly in some way or the other all day. I haven't given the finger to anyone driving since I met you."• "With you I learned how to fight cleaner, how to talk things out better, and how to make a strong loving family out of nothing. These are priceless gifts that I will carry with me the rest of my life. One more thing you did for me: you left, and I had to get through it."• "P.S. I look forward to your letters too much to call. Also, where do you stand on chains?"

Pictorial Composition: An Introduction


Henry Rankin Poore - 1976
    Composition is the harmonious arranging of the component parts of a work of art into a unified whole. Henry Poore examines the works of old masters and moderns in this book and uses these examples to explain the principles of compositions in art.All the paintings that the author analyzes are illustrated in the text — 166 illustrations, including 9 in full color. Thirty-two diagrams by the author accompany his textural discussion of such topics as the importance of balance, entrance and exit, circular observation, angular composition, composition with one or more units, and light and shade. Balance is the most important of these topics, and it is considered in the greatest detail — balance of the steelyard, vertical and horizontal balance, and so on. A complete index enables the reader to locate his own specific areas of interest.To see how a painting by Cézanne, Goya, or Hopper, for example, follows definite principles of composition allows the practicing artist or art student to learn composition from the finest instructors — the artists themselves. This book is also very useful to the art devotee, who will find his appreciation of the subject greatly enhanced.

Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us from Seeing


Darian Leader - 2002
    Afterward, countless people flocked to see the empty space where it had once been on display. What could have drawn these crowds to stare at a blank wall? Many of them had never seen the painting in the first place. Can this tell us something about why we look at art, why artists create it, and why it has to be so expensive? Taking this story as his starting point, Darian Leader explores the psychology of looking at paintings and sculpture. He combines anecdote, observation, and analysis with examples taken from classical and contemporary art. This is a book about why we look at art, and what, indeed, we might be hoping to find.

Color Theory: An essential guide to color--from basic principles to practical applications


Patti Mollica - 2013
     Regardless of your medium, a solid understanding of color and its applications is essential. Petite in size but packed with information, this fresh, contemporary take on the subject of color features step-by-step projects and practical tips and techniques to put color knowledge to effective use. From pigment characteristics and color mixing to color psychology, you’ll find all the insight you need to make dynamic, harmonious, and meaningful color choices in your own works of art. You’ll find within: discussions and illustrations of the complexities of color and how to use it as a tool for communication; tips for creating vibrant mixes, lively blacks, realistic greens, and flesh tones; and an inspiring collection of fresh and contemporary artwork.Begin with an overview of color in the history of art and the science behind color.Then learn color basics: the color wheel; hue, saturation, and value; color and value; color temperature; color relativity; and color schemes.Everything you need to know about pigments and paints is detailed next.With these essentials covered, move on to integrate color with your compositions and painting style as a means of expression.Harness the power of color in your painting with Color Theory!

Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452-1519


Frank Zöllner - 2000
    Full-color reproductions and thorough text provide a quick yet solid introduction to this master.

Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists


Tristan Manco - 2007
    Artists' sketchbooks offer exclusive access into the creative processtheir dog-eared, paint-splattered, sometimes crumbling pages have an intimate and visceral appeal. Street Sketchbook includes never-before-seen works by new and acclaimed figures such as Banksy (UK), Alexander Purdy (US), and more, as well as sketches that have formed the basis of large public works. Ingenious throughout, these sketchbooks epitomize the audacious originality of vision that defines the street art scene today.

Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures


Myron W. Lustig - 1993
    Blending both the practical and theoretical, the concrete and abstract, this book is both enjoyable to read and thoroughly researched. By clearly explaining different theories and the significance of cultural patterns and having readers practice what they learn via examples in the book, Intercultural Competence better prepares readers to interact in intercultural relationships. The book also provides a discussion of important ethical and social issues relating to intercultural communication. The authors cover U.S. cultures as well as global cultural issues.

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy


Mark Doty - 2001
    Combining memoir with artistic and philosophical musings, the poet and National Book Critics Circle Award winner (for My Alexandria) begins by confessing his obsession with the 17th-century Dutch still life that serves as the title of this book. As he analyzes the items depicted in the painting, he skillfully introduces his thoughts on our intimate relationships to objects and subsequently explains how they are often inextricably bound to the people and places of an individual lifetime. Further defined by imperfections attained from use, each object from an aging oak table to a chipped blue and white china platter forms a springboard for reflection. Doty intersperses personal reminiscences throughout, but he always returns to the subject of still-life painting and its silent eloquence. Doty's observations on balance, grief, beauty, space, love, and time are imparted with wisdom and poetic grace.Books like this, that address the sources of creation and the sources of our humanness, come along once in a decade. -Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times"This small book is as wise, sensitive, intense, and affecting as anything I have read in recent years." -Doris Grumbach, author of Fifty Days of Solitude"A gem." -Library Journal"Mark Doty's prose is insistently exploratory, yet every aside, every detour, turns into pertinence, and it all seems effortless, as though the author were wondering, and marveling, aloud." -Bernard Cooper, author of Truth Serum"A dazzling accomplishment, its radiance bred of lucid attention and acute insight. The subject is the profoundly personal act of perception translated into description. Doty succeeds in rendering this most contemplative of arts-the still life-into a riveting drama." -Patricia Hampl, author of I Could Tell You Stories

How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial


Darryl Cunningham - 2012
    His lively storytelling approach incorporates comics, photographs, and diagrams to create substantive but easily accessible reportage. Cunningham's distinctive illustrative style shows how information is manipulated by all sides; his easy-to-follow narratives allow readers to draw their own fact-based conclusions. A graphic milestone of investigative journalism!

Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being


Jonathan Fineberg - 1991
    ARTnews hailed this lively volume as "a fascinating book" by "a superb critic and art historian". For this Second Edition, the author adds a new final chapter and extensively reworks the last quarter of the hook to incorporate current thinking on the art of the last 20 years.

Caravaggio


Catherine Puglisi - 1998
    Rescued from neglect, he has become a cultural icon in the late twentieth century, not only for his art but also because of his violent and tragic life. Catherine Puglisi's highly praised monograph, now available for the first time in paperback, supersedes all previous studies of the artist. Making full use of new research and dramatic recent discoveries, she has produced a precise, clear-headed and comprehensive work of scholarship that also provides a moving biography of the artist and a penetrating analysis of the genius with which he absorbed and transformed the artistic tradition of his time. All Caravaggio's works are discussed and illustrated in colour, and the book has an appendix of documents, full notes and bibliography, checklist of works and full indexes. This authoritative and beautifully produced monograph is the standard work on Caravaggio.

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter


James Gurney - 2010
    This art instruction book will accompany the acclaimed Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist.James Gurney, New York Times best-selling author and artist of the Dinotopia series, follows Imaginative Realism with his second art-instruction book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter. A researched study on two of art's most fundamental themes, Color and Light bridges the gap between abstract theory and practical knowledge. Beginning with a survey of underappreciated masters who perfected the use of color and light, the book examines how light reveals form, the properties of color and pigments, and the wide variety of atmospheric effects. Gurney cuts though the confusing and contradictory dogma about color, testing it in the light of science and observation. A glossary, pigment index, and bibliography complete what will ultimately become an indispensable tool for any artist.This book is the second in a series based on his blog, gurneyjourney.com. His first in the series, Imaginative Realism, was widely acclaimed in the fantastical art world, and was ranked the #1 Bestseller on the Amazon list for art instruction."James Gurney's new book, Color and Light, cleverly bridges the gap between artistic observation and scientific explanation. Not only does he eloquently describe all the effects of color and light an artist might encounter, but he thrills us with his striking paintings in the process." --Armand Cabrera, Artist

Greek Art and Archaeology


John Griffiths Pedley - 1992
    3000 to ca. 30 BC) -- and by medium. Throughout, it blends factual information with stimulating interpretation and juxtaposes long-standing notions with the latest archaeological discoveries and hypotheses.