She endured a catastrophic set of physical calamities as a child and young woman, was an active member of the Communist Party, and survived a tempestuous marriage to the artist Diego Rivera. This book includes many photographs of her life alongside her extraordinary paintings, and presents commentary by leading Mexican art historians, stunning reproductions of her most seminal works -- some never before reproduced, and nine gate-folds allowing the reader to examine in detail aspects of her larger works.

    His style and encouraging words are a form of therapy for the weary, but with Bob it is always about more than painting. There is a hidden depth within his easy chatter, another layer to everything he says. When he talks about painting, he's using it as a metaphor for life!Happy Little Accidents: The Wit and Wisdom of Bob Ross opens with an introduction and brief biography of Ross, followed by a collection of Ross's greatest quotes and most majestic works of art.Relax. Unwind. Be inspired.“Just let your imagination go. You can create all kinds of beautiful effects, just that easy…”

    Bestselling author, artist, and illustrator Lisa Congdon brings her expertise to this guide to the process of artistic self-discovery.Find Your Artistic Voice helps artists and creatives identify and nurture their own visual identity.This one-of-a-kind book helps artists navigate the influence of creators they admire, while simultaneously appreciating the value of their personal journey.• Features down-to-earth and encouraging advice from Congdon herself• Filled with interviews with established artists, illustrators, and creatives• Answers the question "how do I develop a unique artistic style?"An artist's voice is their calling card—it's what makes each of their works vital and particular, but developing such singular artistry requires effort and persistence.Find Your Artistic Voice offers everyday strategies, inspirational anecdotes, and practical advice to push through fear and insecurity in your artistic practice.• Makes a perfect gift for aspiring artists and creatives, serious hobbyists, art students, makers, teachers, budding creative professionals, and fans of Lisa Congdon• A self-help creativity book for those looking for artistic guidance• Great for those who enjoyed reading The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Art/Work: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber

    Gilbert offers insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

    More often than not, these manifestations have been the result of a few like-minded people coming together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it. In the 1990s, a loose-knit group of American artists and creators, many just out of their teens, began their careers in just such a way. Influenced by the popular underground youth subcultures of the day, such as skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion and independent music, artists like Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine and Ed Templeton began to create art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Many had no formal training and almost no conception of the inner workings of the art world. They learned their crafts through practice, trial and error, and good old-fashioned innovation. Not since the Beat Generation have we seen a group of creative individuals with such a unified aesthetic sense and varied cultural facets. The world of art has been greatly affected by their accomplishments as have the worlds of fashion, music, literature, film, and, ironically, athletics. Beautiful Losers is a retrospective celebration of this spirit, with hundreds of artworks by over two dozen artists, from precursors like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Larry Clark, to more recent adherents Ryan McGinness, KAWS and Geoff McFetridge. Work in all conceivable mediums is included, plus reproductions of reams of ephemera. The accompanying essays are contributed by a half-dozen writers who have championed these beautiful losers from the start. This paperback reprint includes more pages, more images, an exhibition checklist, installation shots from a variety of exhibitions and an interview with Beautiful Losers advocate Agnes B.

    This was, without doubt, the most celebrated cohabitation in art history: never, before or since have two such towering artistic talents been penned up in so small a space. They were the Odd Couple of art history. Predictably, the results were explosive. The dâenouement of their life together has entered into folklore. Two months after Gauguin arrived in Arles, Van Gogh suffered a psychological crisis. He spent most of the rest of his life in a mental institution. Gauguin fled from Arles, and they never saw each other again. But in the brief period during which they worked together a stream of masterpieces was created within the studio they shared. Here, for the first time, the full story of their life together is told.

    From choosing the best pens and paper and knowing the different styles of lettering, to adding color to your finished pieces--this book covers it all. The book includes templates for labels, cards, handmade bunting, and word collages. It even includes a how to guide for posting your best work on social media. Each lesson builds on itself, unlocking endless opportunities inside the playful art of brush lettering. As a self-taught artist who left her day job to pursue a creative life, Peggy Dean is the ideal teacher for artists and non-artists alike.

    Now Pollan turns his sharp insight to the craft of building, as he recounts the process of designing and constructing a small one-room structure on his rural Connecticut property--a place in which he hoped to read, write and daydream, built with his two own unhandy hands.Invoking the titans of architecture, literature and philosophy, from Vitrivius to Thoreau, from the Chinese masters of feng shui to the revolutionary Frank Lloyd Wright, Pollan brilliantly chronicles a realm of blueprints, joints and trusses as he peers into the ephemeral nature of "houseness" itself. From the spark of an idea to the search for a perfect site to the raising of a ridgepole, Pollan revels in the infinitely detailed, complex process of creating a finished structure. At once superbly written, informative and enormously entertaining, A Place of My Own is for anyone who has ever wondered how the walls around us take shape--and how we might shape them ourselves.A Place of My Own recounts his two-and-a-half-year journey of discovery in an absorbing narrative that deftly weaves the day-to-day work of design and building--from siting to blueprint, from the pouring of foundations to finish carpentry--with reflections on everything form the power of place to shape our lives to the question of what constitutes "real work" in a technological society.A book about craft that is itself beautifully crafted, linking the world of the body and material things with the realm of mind, heart, and spirit, A Place of My Own has received extraordinary praise.

    Setting Realism in its social and historical context, this title discusses the crucial paradox posed by Realist works of art - notably in the revolutionary paintings of Courbet, the works of Manet, Degas and Monet, of the Pre-Raphaelites and other English, American, German and Italian Realists.

    Most of his pictures, all of which are reproduced in this text, show women about their daily business. Vermeer records the tasks and duties of women, the imperatives of virtue under which their lives were lived, and the dreams that provided the substance of their contrasting counter-world.

    After decades of patient work, Hopper enjoyed a success and popularity that since the 1950s have continually grown. Living in a secluded country house with his wife Josephine, he depicted the loneliness of big-city people in canvas after canvas. Probably the most famous of them, Nighthawks, done in 1942, shows a couple seated quietly, as if turned inwards upon themselves, in the harsh artificial light of an all-night restaurant. Many of Hopper's pictures represent views of streets and roads, rooftops, abandoned houses, depicted in brilliant light that strangely belies the melancholy mood of the scenes. Edward Hopper's paintings are marked by striking juxta-positions of color, and by the clear contours with which the figures are demarcated from their surroundings. His extremely precise focus on the theme of modern men and women in the natural and man-made environment sometimes lends his pictures a mood of eerie disquiet. In House by the Railroad, a harsh interplay of light and shadow makes the abandoned building seem veritably threatening. On the other hand, Hopper's renderings of rocky landscapes in warm brown hues, or his depictions of the seacoast, exude an unusual tranquillity that reveals another, more optimistic side of his character.

    Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting. But we are very far from reaching that state. We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain things, to form opinions, to argue... It is a rare picture which stuns, or argues, us into silence. And if one does, it is only a short time before we want to explain and understand the very silence into which we have been plunged.'Julian Barnes began writing about art with a chapter on Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa in his 1989 novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. Since then he has written a series of remarkable essays , chiefly about French artists, for a variety of journals and magazines. Gathering them for this book, he realised that he had unwittingly been retracing the story of how art made its way from Romanticism to Realism and into Modernism.

    Whether you are a professional artist or designer, a student pursuing a creative career, a person of faith, someone who likes walks on the beach, or a dreamer who sits on the front porch contemplating life, this collection of one- and two-page comics will provide insight into the joys and frustrations of creativity, inspiration, and process—no matter your age or creative background.

    Taking the sculptures out of the museum context (and thus off of their proverbial pedestals), this volume presents a completely new view which affords enlightening comparisons between eras and genres. This remarkable work is indispensable for artlovers of all tastes and disciplines.

    One of the masters of modern European painting, he helped found the popular Viennese Secession, or Art Nouveau, movement. This lushly illustrated volume explores his fascinating artistic career, covering Vienna at the time of Klimt’s creative peak. With more than 300 beautifully reproduced pictures, paintings, and photographs, it presents Klimt’s entire artistic production: posters for exhibitions, erotic drawings, and pictorial masterpieces such as The Kiss, Death and Life, and Tree of Life, along with countless portraits such as the famous Adele Bloch-Bauer I.