These methods are so easy that anyone--from doodler to advanced artist--can master them in minutes! Step by step, you'll learn how to capture the look of metal, glass, weathered wood, skin, hair and other textures. Two detailed start-to-finish demonstrations show you how to use these textures to create drawings that look so real they seem to leap right off the page.

    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.

    However, the very features that define the beauty of the medium can make it difficult to master. This complete guide to understanding the relationships between color, value, wetness, and composition unravels the mysteries of watercolor to help your practice evolve.  Experienced teacher and acclaimed artist Tom Hoffmann offers a unique, inquiry-based approach that shows you how to translate any subject into the language of watercolor. With Hoffmann as your guide, you’ll learn the key questions to ask yourself at every turn and time-tested methods to help you reach solutions.  Hoffmann’s thorough explanations and step-by-step demonstrations delineate the process of composing a painting in watercolor, while art from more than thirty-five past and present masters, including John Singer Sargent, Ogden Pleissner, George Post, Emil Kosa, Jr., Mary Whyte, Trevor Chamberlain, Lars Lerin, Torgeir Schjølberg, Piet Lap, Leslie Frontz, and Alvaro Castagnet serve to illustrate and inspire. Whether you’re a serious beginner or a seasoned practitioner, this book will guide you toward the all-important balance between restraint and risk-taking that every watercolorist seeks.

    The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers is Cetti’s comprehensive how-to manual showcasing her until-now secret techniques for creating 27 popular blooms, including peonies, poppies, roses, and hibiscus. Clear instructions and stunning step-by-step photographs show crafters of all levels how to make individual flowers as well as how to combine blooms to form 20 exquisite garlands, centerpieces, wreaths, corsages, and boutonnieres.

    This showcase of cutting-edge contemporary art from across the globe features galleries of collage by 30 practitioners, from the surreal landscapes of Beth Hoeckel to Fabien Souche's humorous appropriations of pop culture. Each artist has also created a new piece especially for this book—all using the same original image, but with results as wildly diverse as the medium of collage itself. This collection is visual inspiration for art lovers and an appreciation of the transformation of old into new.

    Arabians, Pintos, Morgans and Clydesdales: jumping, bucking, rearing, grazing and kicking -- all are in this collection of 50 drawings.

    You will learn how edging patterns can be used to create entire fabrics, reformatted to make individual decorative motifs, reverse-engineered from existing fabrics, and even used to create three-dimensional designs. Focusing on construction techniques for edgings, The Finer Edge is divided into separate sections based on top-down, sideways, and bottom-up methods to help guide the reader.Though there are 12 project patterns that highlight the edgings, you'll be inspired to creatively mix and match within each edging’s section. Also included in this gorgeous book are charts, illustrations, and photographs of crochet swatches and a pattern collection that includes multiple sizes, including plus sizes.Discover innovation at its finest with The Finer Edge.

    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.

    Cutting hundreds of pieces and joining angled seams can be tough work! But log cabin quilting—an artful and simple way to piece strips of fabric around a central square—is different. From the intuitive construction through the straight-line stitching, this style of quilting is simple as can be. In Modern Log Cabin Quilting, Susan Beal outlines the entire process from start to finish, including basic quilting how-to as well as extensive design, fabric, and embellishment information. Since all log cabin designs follow the same formula, once you master straight lines and right angles, any of the 25 projects in this book are possible. From stash-friendly designs like the Charming Camera Case to more ambitious undertakings like the Vintage Linens Quilt, there’s sure to be a project that will get you into (or bring you back to) quilting!

    These journals are filled with not just attractive, well-composed pages, but pages that are filled with personal, meaningful content.True Visions is focused on ways to bring authenticity and meaning into one's art journaling. The book will examine themes and topics common to all while offering activities and exercises to create rich meaningful content. Each chapter will highlight familiar subject areas such as life events, spirituality, childhood, and even an artist's favorite writings. Within each topic, readers are given guided activities and exercises for developing content, provided one or two artistic techniques, and are shown inspiring examples of work by a variety of talented art journal artists.

    A String and a Prayer recounts the history and symbolism of prayer beads, teaches basic techniques for stringing beads and a host of other objects into prayer beads, and offers a variety of prayers and rituals to use those beads on a daily basis. Beads have appeared throughout history. Prayer beads are used in the spiritual practices of cultures as diverse as the African Masai, Native Americans, Greek and Russian Orthodoxy, as well as the religious rituals of Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and Buddhism. But prayer is highly personal. By infusing prayer beads with personal associations, we can keep our spirituality fresh. The beads are a device to help build and rebuild meaningful ritual in our lives. With myriad ideas about what makes objects sacred and where to find sacred objects from the personal, perhaps beads from a grandmother's broken rosary, to the unusual, maybe seashells from far away found in a thrift store A String and a Prayer offers many suggestions for different ways that beads can be made and used, exploring the creative roles they can play in our relationships, ceremonies, and rituals. "You are the expert, trust yourself. Let the instructions be a guide to your own creativity," write the authors.

    Get in the spooky spirit with this guide to your best Halloween yet! With this collection of 23 Halloween Crafts for Kids: Homemade Halloween Costume Ideas and Spooky Décor, you can:•Design frightfully fun homemade Halloween costumes•Share laughs with your little ones as you make kids’ Halloween crafts•Create homemade Halloween decorations to make your home spook-tacularAnd so much more! This is your year to be the most festive haunted house on the block, so grab this eBook and start preparing for a bewitching Halloween.

    The straightforward instructions discuss topics that include conditioning raw clay and making simple shapes; producing more complex shapes, such as rounds, canes, and spirals; decorating the beads with foils, powders, and milléfiori; and creating faux effects like ivory, bone, turquoise, marble, and silver. A gallery of beads by internationally renowned artists, hundreds of step-by-step photographs of new beads designed by the author, and a clay gauge that allows one to estimate how much clay is necessary to make a specific quantity of beads are included, making this a comprehensive guide that will provide inspiration, demonstrate the range of effects that can be achieved in polymer clay, and teach beaders how to incorporate these beads into jewelry designs.

    "I believe that you must be able to draw things as you see them--realistically," wrote Rudy de Reyna in his introduction.Today, generations of artists have learned to draw what they see, to truly capture the world around them, using de Reyna's methods. How to Draw What You See shows artists how to recognize the basic shape of an object--cube, cylinder, cone, or sphere--and use that shape to draw the object, no matter how much detail it contains.

    The book is organized into 52 different labs which may, but don't need to be, explored on a weekly basis. The labs can be worked in any order, so that readers can flip around to learn a new mixed-media technique or be inspired by a particular collage theme or application. The underlying message of this book is that artists can and should learn and gain expertise through experimentation and play. There is no right or wrong result for a given exercise, yet readers will gain skills and confidence in collage techniques, allowing them to take their work to a new level.Collage Lab is illustrated with brilliant full-color images and multiple examples of each exercise, offers a visual, non-linear approach to learning art techniques, and reinforces a fun and fearless approach to making art.