Introduction by Charles C. Alexander.

     In The Essence of Watercolour Hazel shows how wonderfully versatile and beguiling the medium of watercolour is and how to get the most out of it. Hazel stresses how important it is to understand the characteristics of the medium in order to exploit it to the full.  She encourages the reader to explore the properties of watercolour and to be unafraid of strength of colour and brushstroke.Hazel shows through demonstration and projects that tone is king in watercolour and illustrates how to paint light with the use of shade. Armed with this understanding she demonstrates that watercolour is not such an unforgiving medium after all: accidents and mistakes can be disguised, overridden and corrected.The Essence of Watercolour is a culmination of many years of Hazel's teaching and demonstrating, in which she offers inspirational insights into the secrets of watercolour painting and encourages artists to take their art to the next level.

    "And if we work in that faith, it seems to me that there's a chance that our hopes won't be in vain." His prediction would come true. In his brief and explosively creative life—he committed suicide a few years later at the age of thirty-seven—Van Gogh made us see the world in a new way. His shining landscapes of Provence and somber portraits of workers shattered the relationship between light and dark, and his hallucinatory visions were so bright they nearly blinded the world.He was a great writer as well. In his six hundred–plus letters to Theo he chronicled with heartbreaking urgency his mental breakdowns, acrimonious family relations, and struggles with art dealers, who largely ignored him until the last years of his life. Shading this dark story is the artist’s acquaintance with prostitutes and penury, stormy scenes with his friend Paul Gauguin, and dissipated Parisian nights with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.Julian Bell’s passion for his subject brings the painter to life. Bell writes with slashing intensity, at once scholarly and defiantly partisan. “I have written this book out of my love for Vincent van Gogh, the uniquely exciting painter, and Vincent van Gogh, the letter writer of heart-piercing eloquence,” he declares. For Bell, Van Gogh was an artistic genius and more: he was a wonder of the world.

    A compendium of the life and work of Maxfield Parrish, it is an essential part of a Parrish library. For the collector, the publisher has included a value guide to some of the products that bear Parrish images. Examples of Parrish's most famous book illustrations are shown, including selections from Mother Goose in Prose and the Arabian Nights. Also included are his famous magazine covers-from Life, Collier's, Harper's Weekly, etc., as well as all the landscapes that he painted for Brown and Bigelow, who reproduced them as calendars every year from 1936 to 1963. One of the highlights of the book is the chapter on Parrish's technique, examining in depth his materials, favorite methods, and unique way of painting. In addition, there is a lengthy excerpt from an unpublished manuscript by Maxfield Parrish, Jr., explaining step-by-step his father's glazing technique and use of photography in his work. This definitive study also contains numerous revealing excerpts from Parrish's unpublished correspondence with family, friends, and clients.

    And the most respected of these is the code of silence. For the first time, a hockey player is prepared to reveal what really goes on in the NHL, in the spirit of what Ball Four did for baseball. The money, the personalities, the adultery, and the drugs--and also the little things that make up daily life in the league. Most athletes have little to say, but Sean doesn't have that problem. Yes, he tells us about the guys he's fought and the guys he's partied with, and he tells us where to find the best cougar bars in various NHL cities and what it's like to be hounded by the media when you're dating a celebrity. But Sean's job on the ice was always to get inside the heads of the guys he played against, and that insight on human nature is on full display in Offside.What makes millionaire athletes tick? What are their weaknesses? And in the end, what makes Sean Avery--once called the most hated player in the NHL--who he is? What is it like to make people hate you for a living? Sean Avery's misdeeds on and off the ice are well-documented, and he certainly has his detractors. But on the other hand, he has a lot of supporters, in part for things like being the first North American athlete to come out in favour of marriage equality, and in part just for being an interesting guy. Love him or hate him, he is one of the best-known players of the past few decades, and certainly one of the most colourful and outspoken. In Offside, he meets his accusers head-on, and gives them something to think about.

    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.

    Mucha is most famous for his Sarah Bernhardt posters and his magnificent decorative panels such as "The Seasons," works that continue to grow in popularity, despite the indifferent quality of most modern reproductions. To graphic artists and commercial designers, Mucha is praised for the innovative stylebooks that pioneered the use of Art Nouveau in commercial packaging, design, and ornament. But the primary element in all of Mucha's artistic endeavors — his evocative, highly original draftsmanship — has never been adequately surveyed.This collection of 70 high-quality illustrations — six in black-and-white and nine in full color — offers the first and only comprehensive survey of Mucha's drawings, and as such, provides a unique insight into the aesthetic qualities that were fundamental to all of the artist's work. Reproduced directly from his original drawings, these works span Mucha's entire career and include sketches for his famous book and magazine illustrations, preliminary sketches for paintings, advertising and packaging art, studies for stylebooks, etc. Famous examples include "The Seasons," full-color drawings for the complete set, plus a preliminary charcoal sketch for "Autumn"; St. Louis World's Fair poster, full-color lithograph and preliminary pencil sketch; Sarah Bernhardt, four works in India ink, pencil, etc.; and "Documents décoratifs" and "Figures décoratives," studies from Mucha's two innovative stylebooks.Naturally, many of these drawing are interesting because they reveal the initial thoughts for famous works but most basically these drawings show that Mucha's draftsmanship — highly admired, even by the cantankerous Whistler — was the brilliant underpinning of his entire craft.

    Features 80% exclusive, hitherto-unpublished archive photos and footage sequences of all the key players in situ, together with lyric sheets, Yoko's art installations, and exclusive new insights and personal testimonies from Yoko and over forty of the musicians, engineers, staff, celebrities, artists and photographers who were there-including Julian Lennon, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, Jim Keltner, David Bailey, Dick Cavett and Sir Michael Parkinson. "A lot has been written about the creation of the song, the album and the film of Imagine, mainly by people who weren't there, so I'm very pleased and grateful that now, for the first time, so many of the participants have kindly given their time to 'gimme some truth' in their own words and pictures" -Yoko Ono Lennon, 2018 In 1971, John Lennon & Yoko Ono conceived and recorded the critically acclaimed album Imagine at their Georgian country home, Tittenhurst Park, in Berkshire, England, in the state-of-the-art studio they built in the grounds, and at the Record Plant in New York. The lyrics of the title track were inspired by Yoko Ono's "event scores" in her 1964 book Grapefruit, and she was officially co-credited as writer in June 2017. Imagine John Yoko tells the story of John & Yoko's life, work and relationship during this intensely creative period. It transports readers to home and working environments showcasing Yoko's closely guarded archive of photos and artifacts, using artfully compiled narrative film stills, and featuring digitally rendered maps, floorplans and panoramas that recreate the interiors in evocative detail. John & Yoko introduce each chapter and song; Yoko also provides invaluable additional commentary and a preface. All the minutiae is examined: the locations, the key players, the music and lyrics, the production techniques and the artworks-including the creative process behind the double exposure polaroids used on the album cover. With a message as universal and pertinent today as it was when the album was created, this landmark publication is a fitting tribute to John & Yoko and their place in cultural history.

    The two were almost polar opposites: Rilke in his twenties, delicate and unknown; Rodin in his sixties, carnal and revered. Yet they fell into an instantaneous friendship. Transporting readers to early twentieth-century Paris, Rachel Corbett’s You Must Change Your Life is a vibrant portrait of Rilke and Rodin and their circle, revealing how deeply Rodin’s ideas about art and creativity influenced Rilke’s classic Letters to a Young Poet.

    Patrick McEnroe has been in the world of professional tennis in one way or another for most of his life. As a player, coach, and ESPN commentator, he's seen it all. The significant tennis books of recent years have all been autobiographies--famous players burnishing their image or attempting to set the record straight within carefully controlled memoirs. No one has been willing to do a book that pulls back the curtain and presents an honest, no-holds-barred look into the ultimate gentleman's sport and the larger-than-life personalities that inhabit it. Patrick McEnroe does just that. Curious to know which marquee player threw a tantrum and bailed early on a tournament? Why Roger Federer, presumably the greatest player of all time, has a losing head-to-head record with Rafael Nadal? Why certain tennis prodigies burned out early? The real role of coaches like Nick Bollettieri? Which player is as much of a diva off the court as on? The greatest match ever played? In Hardcourt Confidential, McEnroe uses his twenty-five-plus years in the trenches of the game to tell true tales and wild stories about the players you think you know (from Sampras to Agassi to Roddick to the Williams sisters), how and why the game has changed since he first swung a racket, and what the future holds in store for American tennis. McEnroe takes an unapologetic look at the men, women, and events of the past three decades, right up to the epic Federer vs. Nadal rivalry that dominates the game today. He's got a lot to say and he's not afraid to say it.

    The cult bible of all things Thunders, it is the definitive portrait of the condemned man of rock 'n' roll, from the baptism of fire and tragedy that was the New York Dolls, through the junkie punk years of the Heartbreakers and beyond. It is an unflinching account of a unique guitarist whose drug problems often overshadowed his considerable style and talent, and whose influence on such bands as The Sex Pistols and Guns N' Roses is still resonant.

    With exclusive insights from their friends, families, teammates and managers – including interviews with managers Luiz Felipe Scolari and Vicente del Bosque – Caioli presents a unique insight into what makes a modern player not just successful, but truly great.

    But those headlines do not even begin to tell one of the most compelling and fascinating stories of our time. A maverick from an early age, the strikingly attractive and eccentric heiress thumbed her nose at society, all the while forging an incredible life as a renegade with an appetite for adventure, a weakness for pleasure, and a penchant for privacy. Duke and her lifelong rival Barbara Hutton--with whom she would have to compete for the love of several men, most notably international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa-were dubbed "the Gold Dust Twins." Her father, James B. Duke, namesake of Duke University and one of the richest men in the country, was a rough-edged businessman whose greatest love was for his only daughter. Denied affection from her mother, a glamorous socialite concerned mainly with public appearances, Doris Duke led a sheltered adolescence, seeking friendship with those ignored by high society. Later, as her marriage to the politically ambitious son of a prominent grande dame of society crumbled, her concern with secrecy would develop nearly obsessive dimensions. Duke maintained dictatorial control over her four extravagant homes across the country, and she gained a reputation for excess as well as seeming pettiness. Her phenomenal wealth enabled her to withdraw from the world, even to distance herself from the university that bears her family name, and ignore its responsibilities. Recently she adopted a thirty-five-year-old former Hare Krishna who was a confidante also of Imelda Marcos. Here is revealed for the first time Doris Duke's fascination with those who embraced the spotlight she always shunned, especially Imelda Marcos, who found an ardent and fin

    He won two stages at the Tour de France and an Olympic medal. But after years of feeling off, he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s. The body that had been his ally was now something else: a prison. The Happiness of Pursuit is the story of how Davis sought to overcome his Parkinson’s by reaching back to what had made him so successful on the bike and adjusting his perspective on what counted as a win. The news of his diagnosis began a dark period for this vibrant athlete, but there was also light. His son Taylor’s own bike-racing career was taking off. Determined to beat the Body Snatcher, Davis underwent a procedure called deep brain stimulation. Although not cured, his symptoms abated enough for him to see Taylor compete in the Beijing Olympics. Davis Phinney had won another stage. But the joy, he discovered, was in the pursuit. With humor and grace, Phinney weaves the narrative of his battle with Parkinson’s with tales from his cycling career and from his son’s emerging career. The Happiness of Pursuit is a remarkable story of fathers and sons and bikes, of victories large and small.

    Bartley Gorman was a legend in the brutal world of illegal prize-fighting, and this long-awaited auto-biography, with many unique photographs, lifts the lid on a secret sub-culture.