A series of progressive lessons demonstrates such essential skills as recording edges, creating dimension, adding accuracy, developing value, balancing compositional elements, and drawing the human face, both frontal and profile views. Step by step, readers learn how to create a reasonable likeness of an object and give it spatial depth using such simple black-and-white mediums as pens, pencils, charcoal, and graphite wash. Inspirational examples and tips for success from beginning students who have worked on the same material confirm readers’ successes, and allow readers to consider the advice and impressions of others at the same level.

    Loaded with techniques and tips from an exciting young artist and writer with a fresh style, this book includes great step-by-step instruction from initial lines to black-and white inked illustration to finished art in color.

    Subjective feelings and objective color principles are described in detail and clarified by color reproductions.

    Author Mike Rohde shows you how to incorporate sketchnoting techniques into your note-taking process--regardless of your artistic abilities--to help you better process the information that you are hearing and seeing through drawing, and to actually have fun taking notes. The Sketchnote Handbook explains and illustrates practical sketchnote techniques for taking visual notes at your own pace as well as in real time during meetings and events. Rhode also addresses most people's fear of drawing by showing, step-by-step, how to quickly draw people, faces, type, and simple objects for effective and fast sketchnoting. The book looks like a peek into the author's private sketchnote journal, but it functions like a beginner's guide to sketchnoting with easy-to-follow instructions for drawing out your notes that will leave you itching to attend a meeting just so you can draw about it.

    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.

    From the Eiffel Tower to the Taj Mahal -- 50 man-made and natural structures from around the world are drawn here.

    By following his lessons, you can make any character—person, animal, or object—come to life through animated movement!Animation is the process of drawing and photographing a character in successive positions to create lifelike movement. Animators bring life to their drawings, making the viewer believe that the drawings actually think and have feelings. Cartoon Animation was written by an animator to help you learn how to animate. The pioneers of the art of animation learned many lessons, most through trial and error, and it is this body of knowledge that has established the fundamentals of animation. This book will teach you these fundamentals. Animators must first know how to draw; good drawing is the cornerstone of their success. The animation process, however, involves much more than just good drawing. This book teaches all the other knowledge and skills animators must have. In chapter one, Preston Blair shows how to construct original cartoon characters, developing a character’s shape, personality, features, and mannerisms. The second chapter explains how to create movements such as running, walking, dancing, posing, skipping, strutting, and more. Chapter three discusses the finer points of animating a character, including creating key character poses and in-betweens. Chapter four is all about dialogue, how to create realistic mouth and body movements, and facial expressions while the character is speaking. There are helpful diagrams in this chapter that show mouth positions, along with a thorough explanation of how sounds are made using the throat, tongue, teeth, and lips. Finally, the fifth chapter has clear explanations of a variety of technical topics, including tinting and spacing patterns, background layout drawings, the cartoon storyboard, and the synchronization of camera, background, characters, sound, and music. Full of expert advice from Preston Blair, as well as helpful drawings and diagrams, Cartoon Animation is a book no animation enthusiast should be without.

    Clarifying and simplifying the various aspects of painting with watercolor, Gordon MacKenzie's The Complete Watercolorist's Essential Notebook will encourage and challenge you with new possibilities.Rather than a list of rules, this is a collection of principles, concepts and general information designed to expand your creative process. Mackenzie shares with you tips, techniques, ideas and lessons for a sure path to creative fulfillment and better watercolor paintings.

    The ascendance of nonrepresentational art in the middle of the twentieth century displaced these venerable skills, especially in academic art circles. Fortunately for aspiring artists today who wish to learn the methods that allowed the Old Masters to achieve the luminous color and subtle tonalities so characteristic of their work, this knowledge has been preserved in hundreds of small traditional painting ateliers that persevered in the old ways in this country and throughout the world.Coming out of this dedicated movement, Portrait Painting Atelier is an essential resource for an art community still recovering from a time when solid instruction in art technique was unavailable in our schools. Of particular value here is a demonstration of the Old Masters’ technique of layering paint over a toned-ground surface, a process that builds from the transparent dark areas to the more densely painted lights. This method unifies the entire painting, creating a beautiful glow that illuminates skin tones and softly blends all the color tones. Readers will also find valuable instruction in paint mediums from classic oil-based to alkyd-based, the interactive principles of composition and photograph-based composition, and the anatomy of the human face and the key relationships among its features. Richly illustrated with the work of preeminent masters such as Millet, Géricault, and van Gogh, as well as some of today’s leading portrait artists—and featuring seven detailed step-by-step portrait demonstrations—Portrait Painting Atelier is the first book in many years to so comprehensively cover the concepts and techniques of traditional portraiture.

    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.

    Whether you're a professional artist interested in improving your drawing skills, or an aspiring designer fresh out of high school looking to add to your portfolio, The Silver Way will help you build your confidence and strengthen your work in order to successfully design characters for any project, in any style. Chockfull of helpful--and entertaining!--drawing techniques and easy-to-follow tutorials developed through his decades of experience as an artist on popular animated shows (Kim Possible, Danny Phantom, The Fairly OddParents) and as the owner of Silver Drawing Academy, The Silver Way is the kind of educational art book you'll revisit again and again for guidance, encouragement, and inspiration.

    This gorgeous volume features work from 26 contemporary international artists who are creating images of astonishing intricacy, using little more than paper and blade. Featuring a host of new discoveries and including art by such stars as Nikki McClure, Rob Ryan, and Thomas Allen, as well as a number of emerging practitioners, Paper Cutting is sure to engage art buffs and indie crafters alike. An in-depth introduction by paper art expert Natalie Avella illuminates the rich history of the centuries-old form, and a whimsical preface by beloved artist Rob Ryan rounds out this delightful collection.

    For more than forty years, this book has been recognized as the most thorough reference work on art anatomy in the world. Now, it recommends itself even more strongly to the serious artist as an important study aid. Among its features are: (1) Clear, systematic presentation, taking the student step by step from the simpler skeletal drawings at the beginning to the more complicated body-in-action sketches at the end. (2) The juxtaposition of anatomical drawings and life photographs, making it easy to compare the inner structure of the body with its outer form. (3) Cross-section drawings that give the artist a thorough understanding of the relation of the muscles to each other, to the bone structure, and to the internal organs of the body. (4) Anatomical action drawings that reveal the interplay of muscles and skeleton in different positions. (5) The comparative proportions of the male, female, child, and adolescent. (6) A supplementary text on important features of each anatomical position, including the action of the muscles and their origin. "I recommend Fritz Schider's Atlas of Anatomy for Artists to those who wish to increase their understanding of the human figure." — Robert Beverly Hale, Lecturer on Anatomy, Art Students League of New York. Adopted by Pratt Institute, Cleveland School of Art, Art Students League of New York, and others.

    Peterson stresses the importance of metering the subject for a starting exposure, and then explains how to use various exposure meters and different kinds of lighting. The book contains lessons on each element of the exposure-aperature, shutter speed, iso-and how it relates to the other two in terms of depth of field, freezing and blurring action, and shooting in low light or at night. A section on special techniques explores such options as deliberate under- and overexposures, how to produce double exposures, bracketing, shooting the moon, and the use of filters. Understanding Exposure demonstrates that there are always creative choices about how to expose a picture-and that the decision is up to the photographer, not the camera.

    heroes to confront... elegant elves, shrewd sorcerers and dreaded demons to battle. Following on the wings of the ferociously popular DragonArt, this book shows you how to conjure up your own fantasy realms by drawing inspiration from fairy tales, legends and (if you dare) things that go bump in the night.Breathe the life into your beings by basing them upon fundamental human anatomy--proportions, facial expressions and gender-specific characteristics.Color-coded, step-by-step demonstrations (simple enough that even the dullest of dwarves could follow along!) show you how to create a sordid cast of creatures, including goblins, orcs, sprites, angels, mermaids, centaurs, vampires, werewolves, banshees and more.Accessorize each being by tailoring them with tusks, wings, hooves, daggers, armor and various apparel, from the fine garb of nobles to peasant rags.Copy each being as-is. Or, better yet, follow your own twisted imaginings to conjure up creatures from fantastic lands.