Abstract Expressionism was the defining movement in American art during the years following World War II, making New York City the centre of the international art scene. But what the heck did it mean! The drips, the spills, the splashes, the blotches of colour, the wild spontaneous energy signifying what?

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM FOR BEGINNERS will not only help you understand, but, also, appreciate the art of some of the most iconic figures in modern art Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler and others. Explore their lives and artistic roots, the heady world of Greenwich Village in the 1940s and 1950s, the influence of jazz, the voices of critics and the enduring legacy of a uniquely inspired group of artists.

One of USA Today's "100 Books to Read While Stuck at Home During the Coronavirus Crisis" A dazzling gift, the unforgettable, unknown history of colors and the vivid stories behind them in a beautiful multi-colored volume. "Beautifully written . . . Full of anecdotes and fascinating research, this elegant compendium has all the answers." -NPR, Best Books of 2017 The Secret Lives of Color tells the unusual stories of seventy-five fascinating shades, dyes, and hues. From blonde to ginger, the brown that changed the way battles were fought to the white that protected against the plague, Picasso's blue period to the charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, acid yellow to kelly green, and from scarlet women to imperial purple, these surprising stories run like a bright thread throughout history. In this book, Kassia St. Clair has turned her lifelong obsession with colors and where they come from (whether Van Gogh's chrome yellow sunflowers or punk's fluorescent pink) into a unique study of human civilization. Across fashion and politics, art and war, the secret lives of color tell the vivid story of our culture. "This passionate and majestic compedium will leave you bathed in the gorgeous optics of light." -Elle

The increasing appearance of vertical milling machines in model engineers' and other small workshops has brought the versatility of this type of machine to the notice of a large and growing group of potential users, but until the first edition of this book was published in 1977 there was little available guidance for the average amateur or small user. This third revised edition includes descriptions of many of the very wide range of operations possible with photographed examples, plus information on machines, accessories, cutters, chucks, requirements and methods of work-holding.

Prepare for the cutest world tour ever with this miniature, portable, and even cuter version of Kawaii Doodle Cuties! YouTube celebrity artist Pic Candle shows you how to draw kawaii characters from every stop on the map! The Japanese word kawaii translates to "cute," and this how-to book is chock-full of super-adorable images from your favorite spots around the globe. With doodles of food, nature, animals, architecture, fashion, and more, you will learn to draw cute artwork from countries all over the world! Learn how to draw a darling Eiffel Tower, macaron, and beret from France. Or master how to draw precious natural wonders like Australia's Great Barrier Reef and enchanting architecture like India's Taj Mahal. Or sketch fashion fun like a K-pop skirt from South Korea and charming transportation like a tuk tuk from Vietnam. Mini Kawaii Doodle Cutiesfeatures over 100 lovable, huggable characters and includes simple step-by-step illustrations and instructions, search-and-find puzzle patterns that you can color, and inspiration pages. Thanks to this adorable crash course in doodling all things kawaii, you'll soon be enhancing your notebooks, stationery, artwork, and everything with unbelievably adorable illustrations! Learn how to draw even more cute things with these other fun books in the Kawaii Doodle series: Kawaii Doodle Class, Kawaii Doodle Cuties, Mini Kawaii Doodle Class, and Mini Kawaii Doodle Cuties.

Nobody ever said that oil painting was easy. But it gets much easier and a lot more fun when you follow a step-by-step approach that starts you off on the right foot, helps you build your skills one at a time, and gives you plenty of exercises to develop your craft. That's what you'll find in "Oil Painting For Dummies."

Completely free of arty jargon, this full-color guide has all the hands-on instruction you need to master the basics. You'll see how to plan a painting, build an image in layers, mix colors, and create stunning compositions. You'll also find everything you need to know about oil paints, solvents, and pigments; brushes, palettes, and painting surfaces; and how to keep costs down at the art supply store. Discover how to: Choose the right suppliesSet up your studio and care for your equipmentHandle your materials safelyDevelop your design and composition skillsMake practice sketches and studiesUse broken stroke, dry brush, glazing, scraffito and other brush strokesTry out different compositionsMix any color you wantSimplify tricky still-life subjectsPaint landscapes and common objects out doorsPaint portraits and the human form

Complete with handy color chart, basic materials list, and a very useful viewing square, "Oil Painting For Dummies" is the fun and easy way to discover your inner artist

Colour Demystified will banish the all-too-common confusion over the watercolour palette and give painters the confidence to experiment with colour mixing. This book demystifies colour, and helps artists understand how colour works in a highly visual way through the use of colour charts accompanied by examples, practical exercises, and analyses of watercolour paintings. Numerous artworks by a variety of contemporary artists are featured in the book, covering a broad range of subjects and palettes. Topics such as granulation, iridescence, staining strength, and transparent and opaque colours are explained clearly and simply, and there is practical guidance on colour relationships, using colour to create space, and how to be more creative with colour. Armed with a clearer understanding of colour and how it looks and behaves on paper, artists will be encouraged to be more bold and creative in their use of colour in their art.

In Creative Watercolor and Mixed Media, popular watercolor artist, instructor, and author Ana Victoria Calderon shares her simple step-by-step techniques for painting exciting and colorful motifs by combining watercolor with a variety of other user-friendly materials. Start with the essentials-paint, paper, and brushes-then learn about the featured mediums for mixing, including masking fluid, gold leaf, bleach, salt, and alcohol Take a step-by-step look at fundamental watercolor techniques Learn to paint a variety of striking organic motifs and surface effects, including stirring skies and clouds, sparkling galaxies, flowing oceans, and dazzling crystals Find great project ideas for stylish gifts and stationery Whether you're new to the medium or are looking to add new techniques to your watercolor practice, go grab a brush, paints, and some easy-to-use materials and take a beautiful creative journey with watercolor! Perfect for all skill levels, the books in the Art for Modern Makers series take a fun, practical approach to learning about and working with paints and other art mediums to create beautiful DIY projects and crafts.

The ultimate guide to the potential of ceramic transfer printing as a creative medium. This book is ideal for anyone wishing to combine ceramics with print and transfers, a very exciting area which has enormous scope for creativity. Ceramic transfers or decals are one of the prime methods of decorating industrially-made ceramics. They also offer exciting creative potential for studio-based artists or designer-makers. A ceramic transfer is traditionally made by printing ceramic ink onto a special paper and allows pictures, patterns or text to be transferred onto ceramic forms - 2D and 3D. Importantly, print can achieve distinct aesthetic effects on ceramics that are not possible by using other decoration methods such as hand painting. Drawing on over twenty years of experience, Kevin Petrie offers a focused analysis of the potential of ceramic transfer printing as a creative medium. Discover the specific materials and techniques for making versatile screen-printed ceramic transfers - from the 'low tech' to the more sophisticated. In this book, you can also explore other approaches by artist researchers as well as recent developments with digital transfers. A range of case studies shows the potential and diversity of the transfer printing approach in this area, which extends beyond ceramics to include printing on enamel, metal and glass.

The Ashmolean is fortunate in having the finest collection of Indian art in Britain outside London, one which includes many works of great beauty and expressive power. For this we are indebted above all to the generosity, knowledge and taste of our benefactors and donors from the 17th century to the present. This book offers a short account of how the collection developed and a selection of some of its more outstanding or interesting works of art. While it is written mainly for the general reader and museum visitor, it includes many fine objects or pictures, some of them unpublished, that should interest specialist scholars and students. Since 1987, the Ashmolean has made many significant new acquisitions of Indian art and these are highlighted in this collection. As the book's title implies, it also ventures beyond the bounds of the Indian subcontinent by including works from Afghanistan and Central Asian Silk Road sites as well as many from Nepal, Tibet and Southeast Asia. From the early centuries AD, Indian trading links with these diverse regions of Asia led to a widespread cultural diffusion and regional adoptions of Buddhism and Hinduism along with their related arts. Local reinterpretations of such Indic subjects, themes and styles then grew into flourishing and enduring artistic traditions which are also part of the story of this book. The selection of works ends around 1900. By the 16th century and the early modern period in India, growing European interventions and Western artistic influences under Mughal rule saw a significant shift in sensibility and the practice of more secular and naturalistic forms of court art such as portraiture. By the late 19th century, fundamental cultural changes under British rule and the advent of new technologies brought about a gradual decline in many of India's traditional arts.

A stunning book on kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with precious metals to highlight its history beautifully. A broken pot is made whole again, and within its golden repair we see a world of meaning. Kintsugi is the art of embracing imperfection. In Western cultures, the aim of repair has been to make the broken item 'as good as new'. Kintsugi on the other hand, is a Japanese art that leaves an obvious repair - one that may appear fragile, but which actually makes the restored ceramic piece stronger, more beautiful, and more valuable than before. Leaving clear, bold, visible lines with the appearance of solid gold, it never hides the story of the object's damage. Kintsugi traces memory, bringing together the moment of destruction and the gold seams of repair through finely-honed skills and painstaking, time-consuming labour in the creation of a new pot from the old. There is a story to be told with every crack, every chip. This story inevitably leads to kintsugi's greatest strength. an intimate metaphoric narrative of loss and recovery, breakage and restoration, tragedy and the ability to overcome it. A kintsugi repair speaks of individuality and uniqueness, fortitude and resilience, and the beauty to be found in survival. Kintsugi leads us to a respectful and appreciative acceptance of hardship and ageing. Author Bonnie Kemske explores kintsugi's metaphorical power as well as exploring the technical and practical aspects of the art, meeting with artists and ceramists in Japan and the US to discuss their personal connection to this intricate technique. With the inclusion of diary entries, personal stories, and in-depth exploration of its origin and symbolism, this book shows kintsugi's metaphoric strength as well as its striking aesthetic, making it a unique and powerful art form that can touch our lives.

The official art book for the animated movie The Amazing Maurice, based on the Carnegie Medal-winning Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett Maurice is a streetwise talking tomcat who comes up with a money-making scam by befriending a group of talking rats and finding a dumb-looking kid who plays a pipe. When Maurice and company reach the stricken town of Bad Blintz, they meet a bookworm called Malicia and their scheme soon goes down the drain. The Art of the Film is a coffee table hardback celebration of the creative process of bringing The Amazing Maurice to life, including exclusive concept designs, character sketches, storyboards and production art, alongside insight from the artists, filmmakers and directors.

In Sketching Men, veteran art instructor Koichi Hagawa, PhD explains how to quickly capture the dynamic male form through two distinct styles of sketching: Very rapid (1-3 minute) line drawings that capture the essence of the subject's posture and movement--perfect for recording athletic action poses in the moment More finished tonal drawings, which take a bit longer to render (7-10 minutes), but fill in lots of interesting texture and wonderfully realistic details and nuances, including the play of light and shadow, three-dimensional form and a sense of mass and balance Learn to sketch the following: Individual body parts and their bones and muscles Objects held in the hands and with both arms Standing and sitting poses Transitions from prone and sitting poses to a standing pose Bending, reaching and leaning poses Pushing, throwing and dancing poses Folds, gathers and drape of clothing This book contains hundreds of detailed studies and helpful examples. Your sketches will improve rapidly as you learn all about how human anatomy--the skeleton, muscles and posture--all come together to express the uniquely male form. When you hone your line and tonal drawing skills with this book, all of your artwork will improve as a result, no matter the application: storyboarding, cartooning and graphic novels, illustration, formal drawings, painting and more!

"The Alchemy of Paint" is a critique of the modern world, which Spike Bucklow sees as the product of seventeenth-century ideas about science. In modern times, we have divorced color from its origins, using it for commercial advantage. Spike Bucklow shows us how in medieval times, color had mystical significance far beyond the enjoyment of shade and hue.

Each chapter demonstrates the mindset of medieval Europe and is devoted to just one color, acknowledging its connections with life in the pre-modern world. Colors examined and explained in detail include a midnight blue called ultramarine, an opaque red called vermilion, a multitude of colors made from metals, a transparent red called dragonsblood, and, finally, gold.

Today, "scarlet" describes a color, but it was originally a type of cloth. Henry VI's wardrobe accounts from 1438 to 1489 show that his cheapest scarlet was 14.2s.6d. and that scarlets could fetch up to twice that price. In the fifteenth century, a mid-priced scarlet cost more than two thousand kilos of cheese or one thousand liters of wine. This expense accounts for the custom of giving important visitors the "red carpet treatment."

The book looks at how color was "read" in the Middle Ages and returns to materials to look at the hidden meaning of the artists' version of the philosopher's stone. The penultimate chapter considers why everyone has always loved gold.

Spike Bucklow is a conservation scientist working with oil paintings at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge.

The techniques of depositing a thin metallic layer on an object for decoration, corrosion protection, electrical conductivity, wear resistance and so on have been known for many years but have been developed and improved to a remarkable extent in the second half of this century. This book sets out to discuss the principles and practice of those forms of plating most suited to the amateur and small workshop, using relatively simple and inexpensive equipment to produce results virtually undetectable from work carried out by major plating concerns. Jack Poyner, a professional involved in all forms of plating for many years, is also a keen model engineer able to recognise the dividing line between what his average fellow enthusiast would consider practical and worthwhile and what is really better left to experts in the field. The result is a really useful and practical book, which will be of value to both amateur and light industrial users in many diverse fields.

A light-hearted interactive guide to comics and cartoon-making that uses an activity book format and creatively stimulating prompts to teach the fundamentals of cartooning in a fun and easy-to-follow fashion. From a working cartoonist and comic book making instructor, this all-ages activity book uses humorous and informative one-page comics and exercise prompts to guide young readers (and readers who are young at heart) through easy-to-master lessons on the skills needed to make comics. The activities cover a range of essential comics-making tasks from creating expressions for characters to filling in blank panels to creating original characters and placing them in adventures of their own. Each exercise can stand on its own or work together with others in the book to stimulate creativity via the comics medium. In the end, readers who complete the activities inside the book itself will have created several comics of their own, and will have generated many ideas for more sequential art creations. Praise for Let's Make Comics! "At once playful and complex, this book is a perfect introduction to cartooning, as well as a lovely (and lovingly crafted) tribute to the comics form and a timely reminder that artmaking can be fun."-Roman Muradov, creator of Vanishing Act and On Doing Nothing "Let's Make Comics is a book I wish I had when I was 9, but 29 works too! It's so fun and brilliant and packed with oodles of awesome activities. Great book for learning to make comics or for a seasoned cartoonist to find some new inspiration."-Ben Clanton, creator of the Narwhal and Jelly books "It's fantastic! This book will make you a better writer and a better artist and show you how to think like a comic star."-Charise Harper, creator of the Fashion Kitty and Crafty Cat books "Warning! This book will make you make comics, and it will be fun!"-Greg Pizzoli, creator of The Watermelon Seed, Number One Sam, and The Book Hog "If only we'd had this book! Our comics would be much better."-Elizabeth Pich and Jonathan Kunz, creators of War and Peas

Based on Shannon Bream's #1 New York Times bestselling phenomenon The Women of the Bible Speak, a contemplative companion coloring book filled with meaningful and beautifully designed quotes from scripture to color in and accompanied by contextual references and passages from Bream's book which illuminate the stories from the women of the Bible. In The Women of the Bible Speak, Shannon Bream reminds you that women have long been essential in God's unfolding plan. Bream explains how their experiences can help you better understand what it means to be a woman of faith. From Sarah, to Miriam, to Mary of Nazareth, you can see your own struggles from the wisdom and lessons of the lives of the Biblical women. As you color, you'll find the motivation to better navigate your personal faith journeys. These unique women provide inspiration and guidance, and their stories show you that no matter how fearful, weak, or inadequate you may feel, God always has a plan for you. Bream drives home the message of her inspiring bestseller through the bible quotes in the coloring book that can be personalized, colored, and framed. Containing 36 verses from scripture to be colored in and context from Bream's bestseller, The Women of the Bible Speak Coloring Book will allow you to connect to your faith and contemplate your prayerful relationship with God. Filling in the biblical verses in this coloring book and thinking about the messages accompanying each one can help us discover more about the Bible, solidify our faith, and immerse ourselves in the undeniable power of love and God. Here are examples of verses that you will be contemplating and coloring in this book: "God listened to her" Genesis 30:22 "We will not fear" Psalm 26:2 "Woman, you are set free" Luke 13:12 "She can laugh at the days to come" Proverbs 31:25

An indispensable guide to the colors and combinations of contemporary Japanese design--by one of Japan's leading colorists! Color consultant Teruko Sakurai finds inspiration everywhere--in the foods, landscapes and everyday objects of her native land. Flipping through the pages of this book is like taking a tour through modern Japan. The tones, hues and palettes will dazzle and inspire you. Over 3,300 different color combinations are presented in over 125 different themes. Each two-page section in this book presents a different theme with the following information: An introduction giving a brief background on the color scheme and a description of how it can be used A number-coded nine-color palette board showing the range of shades and hues that complement and comprise the scheme CMYK, RGB and HEX (the color code used in Japan) references for all nine colors 26 examples including two- and three-color combinations with photos and illustrations This is an indispensable guide for graphic designers, illustrators, decorators, artists and publishing professionals. It will also be enjoyable and inspiring for readers planning their own home design or art projects.

Artists need to write, every day, to support their studio practice and careers. Working artists know this. Newly minted art graduates and emerging artists learn this the hard way-usually when a gallerist asks for basic documents like an artist resume, biography, and statement to support an upcoming exhibition! Conversational and instructive, this practical primer helps artists learn the best writing and research strategies for their letters, biographies, statements, proposals, applications, wall text, and more. Kate Kramer, lecturer in critical writing at the University of Pennsylvania, aligns writing strategies with art school curriculum (foundations, topics, capstones, professional development). This is the book every artist will turn to again and again. In addition to models, templates, worksheets, and sample analyses of calls for entry, it references readily available and public resources throughout. Ultimately, this primer brings writing process into practice so the art work can continue to thrive.

Lois van Baarle is a freelance animator/illustrator from the Netherlands who graduated in 2009 from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht. Since then, her work has become very popular across the internet, with her Facebook followers closing in on one million and her Twitter account watched by over nineteen thousand eager eyes. The Art of Loish is her first "art of" book, and will examine her inspirations while showcasing some of her early work. Following this, the reader will learn how she developed her very distinctive style and discover advice as she discusses her working methods, offering tips on a variety of techniques that she utilizes in her art every day! The additional exclusive content of this book makes it a must-have for any lover of Loish's work!