Fall in love with watercolours and create beautiful flower paintings that you can be proud of! Fresh and delicate, flowers are the perfect subject for expressive watercolour art. This skill-building portfolio book for absolute beginners will teach you everything you need to know to get started with watercolour painting. Talented artist Robin Pickens introduces you to all the basics of paint, brushes, palette and water, with easy-to-follow advice on opacity, blending, shading and mixing colours. She then guides you step-by-step through eight complete floral watercolour projects. Each project features soft, muted patterns printed on real 90# thick and tactile watercolour paper. The pages are perforated so you can easily remove your art for gifting or display. Just Add Watercolor Flowers also provides gorgeous fully coloured finished examples to inspire your work on each design.

Vincent van Gogh's paintings are amongst the most iconic and admired in the world. The trials of his life and health are endlessly discussed but the extraordinary richness of his writings and depth of his thinking on creativity, art and beauty is less explored. In Creative Inspiration, Van Gogh's writings have been edited and selected to create an enlightening, uplifting and helpful book for art lovers and creatives - amateurs and professionals alike. 150 carefully selected images illustrate these quotes, focusing on the sketches and drawings that reveal the rigour and ambition with which he approached his work. The book is thematically divided - from Beginnings to Routine to Beauty - and his determination and charisma are shared through words and pictures. A beautiful, and delightfully handy, art book that is designed to inspire.

People of all ages are fascinated by dinosaurs. Though their huge skeletons are an impressive sight, much of our sense of childlike wonder comes from artistic depictions of them in books, museum murals and popular culture. This book is about how such 'paleoart' is created, and the process of integrating scientific findings with artistic principles to produce accurate, expressive and arresting artworks of dinosaurs and the world they lived in. Drawing and Painting Dinosaurs explores the anatomy and ecology of different types of dinosaurs including Deinonychus, Apatosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. It demonstrates how to interpret paleontological research through the lens of an artistic depiction with examples. There are over 250 illustrations feature pencil drawings, gouache, oil paint, and digital media. Step-by-step projects demonstrate the use of both traditional and digital media, the use of unique techniques and sources of reference, and building up dinosaur anatomy from basic shapes. Finally, it gives insight into how paleoart can be a means to advance knowledge through scientific analysis and prediction. With explorations of dinosaur anatomy, unique techniques for reference and a series of how-to instructions, this book will guide an aspiring paleoartist in learning how to breathe life into the past through art.

Creative Block is a book set out to ruffle feathers, get out of ruts and start those juices flowing. Focussing on creative process and theory, it is filled with over 100 tasks to get your head into a conceptual and creative space, encouraging experimentation and playfulness in art. Ideal for artists, industry creatives and individuals who simply want to delve deeper into their own creativity. This book helps to improve your process and technique when approaching art, in all its forms. Intriguing, fun and challenging, Creative Block will have you distorting, abstracting, morphing, reinventing and, above all, leaving the box behind.

Zendalas are actually Zen mandalas A Zendala is an inspired form of mandala that is drawn using tangles to fill each section of a circle. Create your own beautiful Zendalas and other fascinating circular designs with this step-by-step guidebook.For centuries, mandala circles have been used to connect the spirit with the divine, offering symbols found in nature as subjects of contemplation. Drawing a mandala helps one discover true inner self and balance. These special circles provide a unique opportunity to explore ancient teachings.In Zentangle 7, Expanded Workbook Edition, talented CZT artists share their secrets for creating sacred circle designs, and show how to add color, resist, layers, and more. This book includes 40 original tangle patterns, plus a bonus 16-page interactive workbook section where you can get started with warm-up exercises and practice Zendala tangling."

Abstract landscape painting expresses emotion while still capturing the essence of a landscape. This compelling book explores this suggestive style first developed by Turner. Using the hauntingly-beautiful paintings of Gareth Edwards, it explores the technical, historical and psychological dimensions of abstract landscape painting to help you develop your own skilful and intensely personal approach. Through this new book you can learn about how to begin an abstract landscape painting, using chance application; understand how to 'manage accidents' to create innovative pieces of work; discover the importance of effective composition and how this navigates the viewer's journey; determine the importance of the 'invisible' elements of painting: the unspoken value of the viewer and the influence of 'looking'. It also reveals how to utilize a convergence of linear and atmospheric perspective to help your viewer traverse the picture plane and helps you understand the importance of light, space, colour, and tone in generating evocative paintings. Finally, it encourages you to be more demanding of your surface, using textural techniques and glazing to achieve professional production values. It is a unique and exciting book into this under-documented genre.

Following in the successful paw and hoof prints of "The Daily Zoo: Volume One" comes another exotic menagerie of creative fauna from Hollywood artist Chris Ayers. "The Daily Zoo Year 2 "offers more furry and feathered friends along with continuing reflections on his life as an artist and cancer survivor. And, as with Volume 1 and perhaps more so, regardless of your artistic experience, this book will leave you inspired to grab the nearest pencil, pen, brush or crayon and start drawing ... for fun and perhaps as a way to bring healing!

Open the door into new worlds ready to complete and colour with the first colouring book from international tattoo artist Cally-Jo. Each spread in this original and surprising colouring book takes you into a different world or scene, from tropical floral glasshouses to mystical owls and whimsical lions, underwater treasures to ancient Japanese masks. Escape into your imagination as you complete and colour these beautiful pages.

Arthur Wesley Dow taught at major American arts training institutions for 30 years including Teachers College, Columbia University; the Art Students League of New York; Pratt Institute; and his own Ipswich Summer School of Art. His ideas were quite revolutionary for the period, he taught that rather than copying nature, art should be created by elements of the composition, like line, mass and color. He taught many of America's leading artists and craftspeople, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles J. Martin, two of the Overbeck Sisters and the Byrdcliffe Colony.

This is a new twist on the popular theme of colouring animals! Anyone who needs a bit more calm will love this book featuring adorable creatures in yoga poses dogs, cats, bunnies, elephants, foxes, sloths and more some inside delightfully-themed frames to match each animal (a fox framed by a woodland motif, a panda with a bamboo/East Asian motif), as well as yoga class pages, pages of animals doing yoga or meditating together. Includes a page in the back with animals in clearly defined poses with the names of the poses labeled underneath. If you re into colouring and yoga, this is the book for you. From the successful Etsy artist of Le Petite Market, Kimma Parrish, comes a special collection loaded with 35+ colouring projects. Readers will love the unique work of this creator that provides the perfect inspiration for creativity and calming the mind.

This beautiful book combines the author's extensive ecological knowledge with art, and her passion for drawing with ink. It is packed with clear instruction and inspirational illustrations, and will be treasured by artists, illustrators, scientists and ecologists alike. Practical advice is given on using a range of materials and equipment for illustrating in pen and ink, as well as the collection and preservation of subject matter and reference material. Detailed instruction is given on how to create essential mark-making techniques that will enhance your illustrations through accurate depiction of shape, form, texture and pattern, and in the principles and elements of design. Subject-themed chapters include plants, strandline and marine specimens, fossils, invertebrates, and mammals. There are step-by-step exercises suitable for all skill levels, and case studies describing working practice as a professional illustrator.

Art & Fear is about the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. Drawing on the authors' own experiences as two working artists, the book delves into the internal and external challenges to making art in the real world, and shows how they can be overcome every day. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic, and word-of-mouth has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity. Written by artists for artists, it offers generous and wise insight into what it feels like to sit down at your easel or keyboard, in your studio or performance space, trying to do the work you need to do. Every artist, whether a beginner or a prizewinner, a student or a teacher, faces the same fears - and this book illuminates the way through them.

Learn to create detailed female characters to include in your own comic strip or graphic novel! Professional manga and anime artist Kyachi offers aspiring artists an easy-to-follow approach to drawing manga women. For beginners, it can be intimidating to know where to start when drawing the human form. This book is meant to dispel those fears and wipe away any hesitation, so you can begin with a blank page or empty screen and start populating it with people. Soon your simple forms will take on greater detail and your characters will come to life before you! Kyachi has distilled her specialized knowledge of the skeleton, muscles and physical structures, explaining and analyzing the most difficult aspects of figure drawing and presenting it to you in a clear and simple way. With this all-in-one, how-to guide you'll: Create compelling characters and eye-catching action poses Learn about contrapposto (a specialized art term, meaning that most of the body's weight rests on either the left or right leg, achieving an angular or asymmetrical stance) Master traditional freehand, as well as digital techniques Follow along with the step-by-step progressions, before it's time to try it on your own Consult the cartoon guide who pops up and chimes in when expert tips are needed most A series of detailed lessons shows you how to draw the female form in every possible position. Individual chapters cover standing, sitting, reclining, walking, running and jumping. Essential details are then added--such as realistic creases to clothing and colorizing with brightness, contrast and saturation effects. Lovers of action manga and those hoping to create original, complex female characters will find this book absolutely indispensable! *Recommended for artists 16 & up*