Best-selling author, instructor and TV show host, Jerry Yarnell delivers his latest offering with all new lessons and step-by-step projects. Featuring detailed materials lists along with instruction on how to set up a useful painting area, how to find the best brushes and paints, and how to set up a palette, this book will teach readers the methods they need to achieve the painting effects they desire. Includes helpful tips on color-mixing as well as lessons on composition, using negative space, values, and one- and two-point perspective. Readers will also learn techniques for painting rivers, trees, tropical settings, deserts, flowers, birds, rabbits, horses, deer and more. With his signature, easy to follow style, Yarnell provides the instruction needed to help beginners and more experienced painters alike learn to bring life and beauty to their acrylic animal and landscape paintings.

"Alla Prima" is a practical and comprehensive guide to direct painting (characterised by bold, expressive brushwork and a painterly, atmospheric surface), particularly as it is expressed though the work of the author's mentor, Arthur DeCosta, the legendary master teacher. The book covers the history of the direct methods in both Europe and America. From there, it covers detailed step-by-step lessons and invaluable discussions on drawing structure, broken and smooth brushwork and colour development. Further lessons on colour mixing, palettes and materials, brush technique, drawing and paint layering, portraiture, still life, figure and landscape painting are provided, all through illustrated steps, analysis and historical information.Throughout, the book features the work of the European masters of the direct approach, from the old masters (Rubens, Rembrandt, Velazquez) and the late 19th and early 20th century masters (Degas, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Matisse, Cezanne) to the American Prime masters (Sargent, Whistler, Henri, Eakins, Bellows) who spawned such vibrant late 20th century painters as Alice Noel, Wayne Thichaud and Jim Dinc.

Generations of students have benefited from the teachings of this 19th-century master, whose sketches of vignettes from natural settings are accompanied by a series of lessons emphasizing both practical and theoretical considerations. This edition features the added attraction of 23 outstanding plates from the author's Lessons on Trees.

Dealing with forces is part of the basic inventory of artistic processes. In giving shape and movement to material, such forces are manifested in a specific form; as push and pull, for example, as heaviness and lightness, but also as attachment and dissolution. The articles in the book examine notions of formative and motive forces using examples from art, music, dance, theater, photography and literature. The questions posed not only cover how historical notions of force (such as energeia and vis from ancient rhetoric) are adopted, taken further, and correlated with mechanically, metaphysically and organologically based concepts of force, but also how, in the examination of form and movement, the inherent concepts of force are manifested or presented in a new light.

Keeping visual journals has been popular for centuries among artist-travelers like Albrecht Durer, J. M. W. Turner, Katsushika Hokusai, and David Hockney. Explorers like Jacques le Moyne, Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, and Marianne North also recorded their journeys in sketchbooks and diaries. Topographical drawing was essential. Knowing what destinations looked like let voyagers know they had arrived. Carrying this concept to the next level, Sketchbook Traveler expands plein air painting beyond the range of easels and backpacks, providing educators with instructional concepts. It gives professional artists many new (and old) ways to hone mobile sketching skills. Inviting readers to explore their surroundings through drawing and writing, Sketchbook Traveler is a field guide to mindful engagement with personal experience in ways that make every day an adventure.