Drawing Dragons: Learn How to Create Fantastic Fire-Breathing Dragons


Sandra Staple - 2008
    You’ll discover how to draw all types of dragons using nothing but a pencil. Drawing Dragons shows how to bring to life fierce warriors and bearded ancients as well as baby hatchlings and protective mothers. It also features a special section on adding claws, scales, horns, jewels and other unique details to your dragons.Learn to draw:• Ferocious, attacking dragons•Graceful sea dragons•Fire-breathing flying dragons•Wise, thoughtful dragons

Taster Projects (Twenty to Make)


Alistair MacdonaldCorinne Lapierre - 2014
    Once you have enjoyed experimenting with these fun taster projects, there are many more Twenty to Make books available on lots of different craft subjects.We hope that experimenting with these projects will inspire you to try out some of the Twenty to Make titles that these projects have been taken from, when you have had some fun making these tasters! There are projects both for beginners and more experienced crafters to try; from stitching a simple but effective Christmas place setting in felt, and making a lovely pair of button earrings using pretty shell buttons; to crocheting a flower, or a gorgeous beanie hat, and trying your hand at sugarcraft, with a cute dog, a hippopotamus, or a fairy. You could also knit a scarf for the special person in your life, or a cute and cuddly teddy bear for a child. These exciting projects are sure to appeal to a wide range of crafters and will make lovely gifts for family and friends alike. Have fun and happy crafting!Projects include Christmas bunting, sugar dogs and other animals, crocheted flowers, tiny bag made from Jelly Roll scraps, knitted mug hugs, granny squares, knitted baby bootees, a stitched fabric brooch, Steampunk style bracelet, friendship bracelets, earrings made from buttons and much more.

Mixed Media Portraits with Pam Carriker: Techniques for Drawing and Painting Faces


Pam Carriker - 2015
    But not with Art At the Speed of Life author and workshop instructor Pam Carriker as your teacher. She helps you take on faces one quick sketch at a time for faster, easier, more enjoyable drawing and painting. Not your average book on drawing the face, Mixed Media Portraits With Pam Carriker shows easy ways to draw more realistic faces in your own signature style. The goal is not an immaculate finished portrait, but a continually growing collection of personal, expressive sketches that you can use and reuse in your mixed-media work.Inside you'll find:- An easy-to-learn face-mapping technique that allows you to draw faces from your imagination, without a model or photo in front of you - Mini-demonstrations breaking down each facial feature - Simple color combinations for mixing both realistic and out-of-the-ordinary skin tones - 15 step-by-step projects featuring original ways to use your portraits as starting points for mixed-media masterpieces - Tons of expert tips, from selecting the right pencil for the job to creating self-portraits, working with reference photos and using transfer techniques In the true spirit of mixed media, this book is all about combining, layering and experimenting in your pursuit of portrait nirvana. It will get you out of your comfort zone and into the habit of making faces that are truly and uniquely your own.

Andy Goldsworthy


Andy Goldsworthy - 1990
    The many-pointed star formed from large icicles balances on a rock in a quiet Dumfriesshire valley, a delicate bamboo screen stands on a Japanese beach, a great serpentine ridge of earth extends along a disused railway cutting on Tyneside, four massive snow rings mark the position of the North Pole.

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.

Creating Textured Landscapes with Pen, Ink & Watercolor


Claudia Nice - 2007
    Beloved artist and teacher Claudia Nice leads you on an inspired journey through the great outdoors. With paints in hand, she shares with you her best techniques for creating landscapes that come alive with richness, depth and textured detail.Read this guide and start painting right away. As you follow engaging, step-by-step demonstrations and exercises, you'll learn to recreate the textural elements of a range of terrains and landscapes. Chapters include:Creative clouds and skiesMajestic mountains, hills and mesasTexturing trees, trunks and foliageRugged rocks and gritty gravelTransparent textures for rivers, falls and lakesFlowers of the fieldIn a special section, Claudia covers basic texturing techniques with mini demos using lines, dots, bruising, scribbling, spattering, blotting, printing, stamping and more. From paints and pens to sponges, leaves and facial tissue, you'll explore all kinds of fun and inventive ways to create amazing textures.And to help you put it all together, Claudia includes her masterful advice for creating compositions using reference photos, field sketches and your own creative license. Each demonstration features a large image of the completed landscape, so you can see exactly how Claudia's methods work - from start to finish.

Scatterling of Africa: My Early Years


Johnny Clegg - 2021
    Suspended for a few seconds, they float in their own space and time with their own hidden prospects. For want of a better term, we call these moments “magical” and when we remember them they are cloaked in a halo of special meaning.’For 14-year-old Johnny Clegg, hearing Zulu street music as plucked on the strings of a guitar by Charlie Mzila one evening outside a corner café in Bellevue, Johannesburg, was one such ‘magical’ moment. The success story of Juluka and later Savuka, and the cross-cultural celebration of music, language, story, dance and song that stirred the hearts of millions across the world, is well documented. Their music was the soundtrack to many South Africans’ lives during the turbulent 70s and 80s as the country moved from legislated oppression to democratic freedom. It crossed borders, boundaries and generations, resonating around the world and back again. Less known is the story of how it all began and developed. Scatterling of Africa is that origin story, as Johnny Clegg wrote it and wanted it told. It is the story of how the son of an unconventional mother, grandson of Jewish immigrants, came to realise that identity can be a choice, and home is a place you leave and return to as surely as the seasons change.

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.

Drawing: The Head


Andrew Loomis - 1971
    First he covers the basic proportions of the head and the proper placement of facial features. Then he shows you how to render light and shadow, as well as exploring simple techniques for capturing an array of facial expressions and depicting differences in type and character. This comprehensive guide is a welcome addition to any artistÆs drawing reference library!

Creative Awakenings: Envisioning the Life of Your Dreams Through Art


Sheri Gaynor - 2009
    Work in the spirit of the laws of attraction to visualize the life of your dreams. Follow the journey of twelve artists, each who will set a personal dream or intention. Witness the process that each artist takes, as they create a mixed-media piece that sows the seeds of their intention. Step-by-step techniques for a variety of mixed-media processes accompany each piece of finished art. Read about how their lives changed as a result and learn how to set intentions of your own using the bonus tear-out "dream-prompt" cards.

Fabritius and the Goldfinch


Deborah Davis - 2014
     Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novel, The Goldfinch, introduced millions of readers to a painting that becomes a lifelong obsession. Painted in 1654 by Carel Fabritius, the work is of a small bird, chained to its perch. This mysterious portrait, a masterpiece of the Dutch Golden Age, has been lost and found, adored and abandoned, for nearly four centuries. Now more famous than ever, this painting is the subject of its own book—a look behind the scenes at its creation and the tumultuous life of its creator. This gripping, true story of adventure, romance, and artistic fervor has never before been told and will enthrall readers of the now famous novel. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Holland in the seventeenth century, when it was the economic capital of the world, the book is populated by a glittering crowd of the wealthy and young, high society with appetites for success and excess. Holland was the center of the art world as well, boasting both Rembrandt, (Fabritius' mentor), and Vermeer (his rival). And there is Carel Fabritius himself—handsome, talented, hell-bent on greatness, but unable to escape tragedy. Yet through The Goldfinch, he achieves immortality. Deborah Davis is the author of the best-selling Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X, Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball, Gilded: How Newport Became the Richest Resort in America, and the prize-winning Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner that Shocked a Nation. Cover design by Adil Dara

Unstill Life: A Daughter's Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction


Gabrielle Selz - 2014
    What followed was a whirlwind childhood spent among art and artists in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Gabrielle grew up in a home full of the most celebrated artists of the day: Rothko, de Kooning, Tinguely, Giacometti, and Christo, among others.Poignant and candid, Unstill Life is a daughter’s memoir of the art world and a larger-than-life father known to the world as Mr. Modern Art. Selz offers a unique window into the glamour and destruction of the times: the gallery openings, wild parties and affairs that defined one of the most celebrated periods in American art history. Like the art he loved, Selz’s father was vibrant and freewheeling, but his enthusiasm for both women and art took its toll on family life. When her father left MoMA and his family to direct his own museum in California, marrying four more times, Selz’s mother, the writer Thalia Selz, moved with her children into the utopian artist community Westbeth. Her parents continued a tumultuous affair that would last forty years.Weaving her family narrative into the larger story of twentieth-century art and culture, Selz paints an unforgettable portrait of a charismatic man, the generation of modern artists he championed and the daughter whose life he shaped.

Pyrography Workbook: A Complete Guide to the Art of Woodburning


Sue Walters - 2005
    They will learn how to prepare wood surfaces before burning, how to transfer a design or pattern, and how to select materials for burning, coloring, and finishing a project. Methods for burning onto wood, leather, paper, bark, and antlers are detailed alongside ample pictures of pyrography on the various materials that will inspire novice woodburners. Numerous techniques are also discussed, including solar, negative, relief, engraving, torch, and hot wire. The most difficult area for burners--how to realistically create animal fur, feathers, and eyes--is addressed.

Realistic Abstracts: Painting Abstracts Based on What You See


Kees van Aalst - 2010
    Shows how to create abstract paintings within the rules of realism through a list of tools and materials, lessons on applying traditional elements to abstract art, and projects with instructions and color illustrations.

Easy To Crochet 2 Hour Slippers


Vicki Becker - 2013
    You can crochet these slippers in about 2 hours dependingon how fast you crochet using bulky yarn and a J, K, or L hook.The pattern instructions are for 4 styles of ladies slippers in three sizes. Patterns for threeflower embellishments and 2 bows are included.This crochet pattern is suitable for beginners.You should know how to chain, single crochet,half double crochet, double crochet, and sew seams together with yarn. Ariana - These slippers are so soft and comfortable with just the right amount of stretch. You can crochet these in less than 2 hours and they make great gifts. Carrie - Super simple to make, these soft and cozy slippers are just right for lounging around. Flora - A pretty pair of slippers that fit your feet quite cozily! Isabell -This pretty ballerina style slipper can be made in two colors or just use one. I hope you enjoy my patterns for these easy to crochet slippers.