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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Art treatments & subjects > Art techniques & materials > Art techniques & principles
This charmingly illustrated book is an ideal guide to the art of
botanical drawing and painting. You should never hesitate to pull a
flower apart to understand how it fits together, to turn the
subject round until you are satisfied with its position, or to do
pencil sketches of it in various positions. From sketching basic
shapes and making volumes to creating textures and visualising the
colour spectrum, this book is here to teach you how to look and
observe, since you can only properly transcribe what you
understand. Through step-by-step demonstrations and with colourful
illustrations, Agathe Ravet-Haevermans teaches you how to recognise
and draw a wide variety of flowers and leaves, and covers the
textures and structural elements of a range of different plants
including succulents, vegetables, trees and grasses. Practical as
well as beautiful, The Art of Botanical Drawing is a necessary
addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in botanical art.
This book is ambitiously inter-disciplinary. Its eleven works, in
full colour, form a striking contribution to the commonwealth of
colour studies and to a possible unification of C. P. Snow's Two
Cultures. Colour and inter-disciplinarity go hand in hand. This so
often involves the authors leaving the comfort zone of their
original specialty and striving for excellence in another. The
personal story of Franziska Schenk is but one good example. Colour
in Art, Design and Nature may be divided into four main sections,
defined in terms of the authors themselves. First, there are two
contributions by biologists. Second, the largest section is by
practicing artists. Third, there are two engineering-based
contributions. Finally, two contributions address some of the
historical proponents of colour theory and art. It seems that our
perceptions of aesthetics and beauty must be very flexible indeed
so as to find absolute opposites equally fascinating. If so, it
goes to show how wonderful are the construction and operation of
the human brain. Does psychology win in the end? Does colour lead
to a single culture?"
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