The Lives of the Artists


Giorgio Vasari
    Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Drawing Dimension - Shading Techniques: A Shading Guide for Teachers and Students (How to Draw Cool Stuff)


Catherine V. Holmes - 2017
    By controlling pencil pressure and stroke, understanding light and having knowledge of blending techniques, an artist can enhance their work and offer the “wow” factor needed to produce realistic artworks. Drawing Dimension - A Shading Guide for Teachers and Students offers a series of shading tutorials that are easy to understand and simple to follow. It goes beyond the standard "step by step" instruction to offer readers an in-depth look at a variety of shading techniques and their applications. Inside this book is a series of lessons designed to teach you how to add dimension to your own drawings, how to analyze real life objects and shade, create highlights, blend tones, and produce realistic drawings with ease. We will explore hatching, cross hatching, and stippling techniques and learn how to use contrast to set a mood and create a focal point. At last - we’ll put all of these skills to the test and work together to produce a beautiful piece of art. Drawing Dimension - A Shading Guide for Teachers and Students includes many resources to help you along the way through examples, tips on what you should aim for, and pitfalls to avoid. Each lesson is tailored to help you refine your shading techniques so you can add more depth and realism to your work. The book is perfectly suitable for beginners and moderates of all ages, students and teachers, professionals and novices; anyone can learn how to shade like a pro!

The Power of Art


Simon Schama - 2006
    "The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things; visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality. . . ."With the same disarming force, The Power of Art propels us on an eye-opening, breathtaking odyssey, zooming in on eight extraordinary masterpieces, from Caravaggio's David and Goliath to Picasso's Guernica. Jolting us far from the comfort zone of the hushed art gallery, Schama closes in on intense make-or-break turning points in the lives of eight great artists who, under extreme stress, created something unprecedented, altering the course of art forever.The embattled heroes—Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko—each in his own resolute way, faced crisis with steadfast defiance, pitting passion and conviction against scorn and short-sightedness. The masterpieces they created challenged convention, shattered complacency, shifted awareness and changed the way we look at the world.With vivid storytelling and powerfully evocative descriptive passages, Schama explores the dynamic personalities of the artists and the spirit of the times they lived through, capturing the flamboyant theatre of bourgeois life in Amsterdam, the passion and paranoia of Revolutionary Paris, and the carnage and pathos of Civil War Spain.Most compelling of all, The Power of Art traces the extraordinary evolution of eight "eye-popping" world-class works of art. Created in a bolt of illumination, such works "tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver. And when they do that, they answer, irrefutably and majestically, the nagging question of every reluctant art-conscript . . . 'OK, OK, but what's art really for?'"

Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital


Todd Gustavson - 2009
    Few inventions have had the impact of this ingenious, elegant, and deceptively simple device.This gorgeous cornerstone volume, created in collaboration with the world-famous George Eastman House, celebrates the camera and the art of the photograph. It spans almost two hundred years of progress, from the first faint image ever caught to the instantaneous pictures snapped by today’s state-of-the-art digital equipment.The informative narrative by Todd Gustavson traces the camera’s development, the lives of its brilliant but often eccentric inventors, and the artists behind the lens. Images and highly descriptive captions for more than 350 cameras from the George Eastman House Collection, plus more than 100 historic photos, ads, and drawings, complement the text.A foreword by the George Eastman House Director Anthony Bannon, and insightful essays by Steve Sasson, inventor of the digital camera, and Alexis Gerard, visionary founder and president of Future Image Inc., completes this illuminating study of one of the greatest modern technological achievements.

Learn Tunisian Crochet: Beginner Stitch Guide & 6 Easy Potholder Patterns (Tiger Road Crafts Book 2)


Tara Cousins - 2014
    The "Getting Started" section will give you a great overview and help explain some things for the very beginner. Next, learn some easy stitch patterns in the section "Basic Stitches." When you're ready to try your first project, take a look at the "Potholder Patterns" section, but make sure to read the "Pattern Information & Notes" first for some important stuff that pertains to all the patterns. The ebook is also filled with photos to help you along your way.Why Potholders?Potholders are a great project to work with Tunisian crochet because:• The back/wrong side is hidden between the two layers• Tunisian crochet makes a very thick final product• Working square shapes is easy for the beginnerHave fun, and happy hooking to you!

Shojo Fashion Manga Art School, Year 2: Draw Modern Looks


Irene Flores - 2012
    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.

The Complete Pin-Ups


Gil Elvgren - 1999
    His technique-which earned him a reputation as "The Norman Rockwell of cheesecake"-involved photographing models and then painting them into gorgeous hyper-reality, with longer legs, more flamboyant hair and gravity-defying busts, and in the process making them the perfect moral-boosting eye-candy for every homesick private.

Simple Soldering: A Beginner's Guide to Jewelry Making


Kate Ferrant Richbourg - 2012
    Fortunately, Simple Soldering proves that does not need to be the case. This handy how-to guide is complete in its exploration of the craft of creating soldered metal jewelry, including tools, techniques, and 20 beautiful projects that beginners and enthusiasts can make at home.Author and teacher Kate Richbourg demystifies basic soldering for any home crafter, showing how to create sophisticated, polished, and professional-looking jewelry pieces through simple soldering techniques. First, she instructs how to set up a jewelry workspace that fits the confines of your budget and living space. Detailed step-by-step instructions walk you through the basic tools and materials you need, plus how to use them. A sample chapter gives a host of introductory exercises that teach solid skills, allowing you to test these techniques on a small scale. Finally, you'll discover 20 finished projects that include earrings, pendants, rings, bracelets, and clasps that may also include bead or wire embellishment.Kate also demonstrates how to combine and layer techniques to gorgeous effect. She also examines common mistakes, shows how to correct or adapt them, and gives advice on when it’s time to start over. Most of all, having taught thousands of classes on soldering, Kate has a "you can do it!" attitude that shines through to help even the most reluctant jewelry maker fire up the torch with ease.Paired with an instructional DVD, Kate’s expert teaching skills will help projects come alive, right in your own studio.With Simple Soldering, the art of metal working one-of-a-kind jewelry is now at your fingertips.

Artspeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1945 to the Present


Robert Atkins - 1990
    Discusses the terms, movements, and major artists in the modern American and European art world.

Layout Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Building Pages in Graphic Design


Kristen Cullen - 2007
    In this edition, author Kristin Cullen tackles the often perplexing job of nailing down a layout that works.More than a collection of great examples of layout, this book is an invaluable resource for students, designers, and creative professionals who seek design understanding and inspiration. The book illuminates the broad category of layout, communicating specifically what it takes to design with excellence. It also addresses the heart of design-the how and why of the creative process.Cullen approaches layout with a series of step-by-step fundamental chapters (a "how-to" of layout) addressing topics such as The Function of Design, Inspiration, The Design Process, Intuition, Structure and Organization, The Interaction of Visual Elements, Typography, and Design Analysis. The book offers inspirational quotations and a unique, progressive design that truly reflects its content.

Hokusai


Rhiannon Paget - 2018
    Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is not only one of the giants of Japanese art and a legend of the Edo period, but also a founding father of Western modernism, whose prolific gamut of prints, illustrations, paintings, and beyond forms one of the most comprehensive oeuvres of ukiyo-e art and a benchmark of japonisme. His influence spread through Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, and beyond, enrapturing the likes of Claude Monet (who bought 23 of his prints), Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Vincent van Gogh. Hokusai was always a man on the move. He changed domicile more than 90 times during his lifetime and changed his own name through at least seven professional pseudonyms. In his art, he adopted the same restlessness, covering the complete spectrum of Japanese ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") practice in painting and woodblock, from single-sheet prints of landscapes and actors to erotic books, album prints, illustrations for verse anthologies and historical novels, and surimono, which were privately issued prints for special occasions. Hokusai's print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, published between 1826 and 1833 is the artist's most renowned work and, with its soaring peak through different seasons and from different vantage points, marked the towering summit of the Japanese landscape print. The series' The Great Wave off Kanagawa, also known simply as The Great Wave , is one of the most recognized images of Japanese art in the world. This TASCHEN introduction spans the length and breadth of Hokusai's career with key pieces from his far-reaching portfolio. Through these meticulous, majestic works and series, we trace the variety of Hokusai's subjects, from erotic books to historical novels, and the evolution of his vivid formalism and decisive delineation of space through color and line that would go on to liberate Western art from the constraints of its one-point perspective and unleash the modernist momentum.

Hand to Earth Andy Goldsworth Scuplture 1976-1990


Terry Friedman - 1991
    Here nearly 200 illustrations--over 100 in color--make a fascinating collection.

Perspective Made Easy


Ernest Norling - 1939
    This easy-to-follow book — the first devoted entirely to clarifying the laws of perspective — remedies the situation. In it, the author uses over 250 simple line drawings to illustrate the concepts involved.Beginning with clear, concise, immediately applicable discussions of the horizon, vanishing point, and the crucial relationship of eye level to perspective drawing, you'll learn how to place figures and objects in a drawing, depict interiors, create shade and shadows, and achieve all the other elements necessary for a successful perspective drawing. By repeatedly stressing important points, Mr. Norling teaches you to make them second-nature. Moreover, his approach is so simple and direct that no matter how little raw talent or experience you have, you will soon be able to apply these techniques almost instinctively.Mastery of perspective is a basic skill every artist must have. This simple, nontechnical guide will enable you to master its essentials in a relatively short time. Clear and concise, this book is an essential addition to any artist's bookshelf.

Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams, and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking


Annie Atkins - 2020
    Dublin-based designer Annie Atkins invites readers into the creative process behind her intricately designed, rigorously researched, and visually stunning graphic props. These objects may be given just a fleeting moment of screen time, but their authenticity is vital and their role is crucial: to nudge both the actors on set and the audience just that much further into the fictional world of the film.

Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor


Lynda Barry - 2014
    I had no idea that nearly 40 years later, I would not only still be using it as the most reliable route to the thing I've come to call my work, but I'd also be showing others how to use it too, as a place to practice a physical activity — in this case writing and drawing by hand — with a certain state of mind.This practice can result in what I've come to consider a wonderful side effect: a visual or written image we can call 'a work of art,' although a work of art is not what I'm after when I'm practicing this activity.What am I after? I'm after what Marilyn Frasca called "being present and seeing what's there."This book is a collection of bits and pieces from the many notebooks I kept during my first three years of trying to figure out how to teach this practice to my students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison."