The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting: Techniques for Rendering Sky, Terrain, Trees, and Water


Suzanne Brooker - 2015
    In The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting, established Watson-Guptill author and noted instructor/painter Suzanne Brooker presents the fundamentals necessary for mastering landscape oil painting, breaking landscapes down into component parts: sky, terrain, trees, and water. Each featured element builds off the previous, with additional lessons on the latest brushes, paints, and other tools used by artists. Key methods like observation, rendering, and color mixing are supported by demonstration paintings and samples from a variety of the best landscape oil painters of all time. With The Elements of Landscape Oil Painting, oil painters looking to break into landscape painting or enhance their work will find all the necessary ingredients for success.

Art as Therapy


Alain de Botton - 2013
    Art as Therapy is packed with 150 examples of outstanding art, with chapters on Love, Nature, Money, and Politics outlining how these works can help with common difficulties. For example, Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter helps us focus on what we want to be loved for; Serra's Fernando Passoa reminds us of the importance of dignity in suffering; and Manet's Bunch of Asparagus teaches us how to preserve and value our long-term partners.De Botton demonstrates how art can guide and console us, and along the way, help us to better understand both art and ourselves.

Rethinking Acrylic: Radical Solutions for Exploiting the World's Most Versatile Medium


Patti Brady - 2008
    But what it lacks in years, it makes up for in its range of use. Acrylics appeared on the market for artists in the late 1940s as a quick-drying alternative to oil paint. In its early manifestations, it dried so quickly that more than a few brushes stuck immediately to the canvas!Although acrylic has been around for more than fifty years, incredible advances continue to be made in the research and development of acrylic polymers and pigments. These advancements are attributable not only to the efforts of a few dedicated chemists, but also to the work of an entire community devoted to acrylic. There are a lot of brilliant minds taking these minute molecules very seriously.

Art & Soul, Reloaded: A Yearlong Apprenticeship for Summoning the Muses and Reclaiming Your Bold, Audacious, Creative Side


Pam Grout - 2017
      Making art does not necessarily mean painting a gallery-worthy still life or belting out a Grammy-winning song. It simply means finding a way to give your inner muse a voice in this world. Sure, there’s drawing, dancing, singing, and writing. But there’s also art to be made from creating your own pair of angel wings or inventing a new toy or curating your own at-home film festival.   Each week features a project of self-examination, an inspirational message, a real-world example of a celebrity who has addressed similar obstacles, and three zany activities to awaken your infinite creativity.   It’s time to declare the beat of your own drum.

Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want


Barbara Sher - 1979
    Now she's a pilot. Peter Johnson was a truck driver. Now he's a dairy farmer. Tina Forbes was a struggling artist. Now she's a successful one. Alan Rizzo was an editor. Now he's a bookstore owner.What they have in common--and what you can share--are Barbara Sher's effective strategies for making real changes in your life. This human, practical program puts your vague yearnings and dreams to work for you--with concrete results. You'll learn how to- Discover your strengths and skills- Turn your fears and negative feelings into positive tools- Diagram the path to your goal--and map out target dates for meeting it- Chart your progress--day by day- Create a support network of contacts and sources- Use a buddy system to keep you on track

Journal Revolution: Rise Up & Create! Art Journals, Personal Manifestos and Other Artistic Insurrections


Linda Woods - 2007
    Grab your mess kit - we're starting a Journal Revolution.Overthrow your inner critic's tyranny of fear and rules, and discover fresh techniques and inspiration to rant, whisper, beg, stomp or sing your truths. Celebrate your rough edges with a revolutionary new approach to art journaling, as you learn to vividly express your uncensored emotions and boldly record your deepest secrets.Each chapter pulses with honest humor, art and writing guidance, and easy ways to create vibrant, edgy art. Once you've been through basic training, you'll practice these Tactical Maneuvers with dynamic projects such as Feel The Beat: Your Life Soundtrack personalized CD covers, retro-looking Fauxlaroid pictures worth a thousand words, and framed canvas Writings on the Wall. Along the way, Sound Off! exercises help you trek confidently into new territory.Featuring a bonus gallery of art by Rosie O'Donnell and members of the Art Army, Journal Revolution will have you marching to the beat of your most creative drummer, knowing that everything in your life really is part of "the journal."

Life Without Envy: Ego Management for Creative People


Camille DeAngelis - 2016
    In these pages you'll find strategies for escaping the negative feedback loop you get stuck in whenever you compare yourself to your fellow artists. You'll begin to resolve your hunger for recognition, shifting your mindset from “proving yourself” to making a contribution and becoming part of a supportive creative community. Best of all, you'll come to understand that your worth—as an artist and a human being—has nothing to do with how your work is received in the wider world. Life Without Envy offers a blueprint for real and lasting contentment no matter what setback you’re weathering in your creative life.

The Red Book: Liber Novus


C.G. Jung - 2009
    Here he developed his principle theories—of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation—that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality. While Jung considered The Red Book to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public. It is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par with The Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This publication of The Red Book is a watershed that will cast new light on the making of modern psychology. 212 color illustrations.

The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday


Rob Walker - 2019
    Our lives are in constant tether to phones, to email, and to social media. In this age of distraction, the ability to experience and be present is often lost: to think and to see and to listen.Enter Rob Walker's The Art of Noticing--an inspiring volume that will help you see the world anew. Through a series of simple and playful exercises--131 of them--Walker maps ways for you to become a clearer thinker, a better listener, a more creative workplace colleague, and finally, to rediscover what really matters to you.

On Writing


Ernest Hemingway - 1984
    In his novels and stories, in letters to editors, friends, fellow artists, and critics, in interviews and in commissioned articles on the subject, Hemingway wrote often about writing. And he wrote as well and as incisively about the subject as any writer who ever lived…This book contains Hemingway’s reflections on the nature of the writer and on elements of the writer’s life, including specific and helpful advice to writers on the craft of writing, work habits, and discipline. The Hemingway personality comes through in general wisdom, wit, humor, and insight, and in his insistence on the integrity of the writer and of the profession itself.—From the Preface by Larry W. Phillips

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre


Keith Johnstone - 1979
    Admired for its clarity and zest, Impro lays bare the techniques and exercises used to foster spontaneity and narrative skill for actors. These techniques and exercises were evolved in the actors' studio, when he was Associate Director of the Royal Court and then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers called The Theatre Machine.Divided into four sections, 'Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills' and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific approaches which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

The Artist's Way at Work: Riding the Dragon


Mark Bryan - 1998
    This spurred them to refine the methods to help people perform more creatively and effectively at work. The program is revealed in The Artists' Way at Work: a twelve-week encounter with your own ingenuity, struggles, strengths and dreams -- as well as the political guidance to enable you to get things done.Through powerful self-assessment exercises with intriguing titles such as "Power Inside vs. Power Outside," "Developing Creative Continuity," and "Finding Your Truth," readers learn to release their creative spirit at work and tap reserves of energy, vision, and passion. The Artists' Way at Work will help you excel in your job, launch the business of your dreams, or find the career you love. Best of all, you will learn to "live in the paradox" -- to develop a personal philosophy of excellence that sustains you, whatever the future holds.The processes in this book are rooted in cutting-edge principles of human development, organizational behavior, and the arts. They have been rigorously tested among business audiences and will unleash a degree of satisfaction at work (and in life) you may never have believed possible. For every one of us who works, The Artists' Way at Work reveals a completely new way to thrive.

The Art of Looking Sideways


Alan Fletcher - 2001
    It is an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes and memories, all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters, all this material is presented in a wonderfully inventive series of pages that are themselves masterly demonstrations of the expressive use of type, space, color and imagery.This book does not set out to teach lessons, but it is full of wisdom and insight collected from all over the world. Describing himself as a visual jackdaw, master designer Alan Fletcher has distilled a lifetime of experience and reflection into a brilliantly witty and inimitable exploration of such subjects as perception, color, pattern, proportion, paradox, illusion, language, alphabets, words, letters, ideas, creativity, culture, style, aesthetics and value.The Art of Looking Sideways is the ultimate guide to visual awareness, a magical compilation that will entertain and inspire all those who enjoy the interplay between word and image, and who relish the odd and the unexpected.

The Power of Your Other Hand: A Course in Channeling the Inner Wisdom of the Right Brain


Lucia Capacchione - 1988
    Includes exercises and experiments to tap the creative and intuitive potential of the non-dominant hand.

Wall and Piece


Banksy - 2005
    Not only did he smuggle his pieces into four of New York City's major art museums, he's also "hung" his work at London's Tate Gallery and adorned Israel's West Bank barrier with satirical images. Banksy's identity remains unknown, but his work is unmistakable with prints selling for as much as $45,000.