The monochrome - a single colour of paint applied over the entirety of a canvas - remains one of the more contentious modernist artistic inventions. But whilst the manufacture of these 'pictures of nothing' was ostensibly straightforward, their subsequent theorisation has been anything but. More than a history, Monochrome: Darkness and Light in Contemporary Art is the first account of the monochrome's lively role in contemporary art. Liberated from the burden of representation, the monochrome first stood for emancipation: an ideological and artistic impulse that characterised the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. Historically, the monochrome embodied the most extreme form of abstraction and pure materiality. Yet more recently, adaptations of the art form have focused on a broader range of cultural and interpretive contexts. Provocative, innovative and timely, this book argues that the latest artistic strategies go beyond stylistic concerns and instead seek to re-engage with ideas around authorship, process and the conditions of the visible as they are given and understood through both light and darkness. Discussing works by artists such as Katie Paterson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tom Friedman, Bruno Jakob, Sherrie Levine and Ceal Floyer, the book shows that the debates around an artwork's form and its possibility for meaning that the monochrome first engendered remain very much alive in contemporary visual culture.

Wander into the immersive illustrated universe of Beatrice Blue. Filled with playful characters, enchanting natural scenery, and captivating narratives, Beatrice's designs will appeal to everyone's inner child. Her fantastic use of vibrant color and luminous finishes give her imaginative scenes life and vigor, while her expressive texturing techniques embellish her already intricately detailed works further, to create designs with depth and integrity. Discover how Beatrice harmoniously manages her work and life schedule to stay inspired and keep producing fresh and engaging art. She also explains how she builds her stunning compositions and considers every integral detail to create balanced designs. Make sure to take note of the invaluable insights she has to share from her experiences working for industry leaders and find out how to develop designs with personality, in order to stand out from the crowd. This beautiful handheld hardback title is the perfect book to carry with you on all your exciting adventures, providing you with a portal to a colorful and deeply magical world.

Master the challenges of drawing on location with this collection of insider know-how and expert tips and techniques. Illustrator, architect, and international workshop instructor and Urban Sketcher Stephanie Bower has collected 101 of her best insider drawing tips, hacks, and techniques and shares them in this fully illustrated, portable book. Learn shortcuts to getting your perspective right, determining your composition, and balancing your light and shadow. This book collects many basic drawing techniques into one handy volume: How to draw a great line Using ellipses to draw arches How towers are like wedding cakes The importance of your eye level line in sketching and 97 things more! The book also features beautiful example illustrations from Urban Sketchers around the globe! Whether you are new to sketching or are an experienced artist, this book is chock-full of useful, practical, and clever tips to take your drawing to the next level. The Urban Sketching Handbook series offers location artists expert instruction on creative techniques, on-location tips and advice, and an abundance of visual inspiration. These handy references come in a compact, easy-to-carry format-perfect to toss in your backpack or artist's tote.

An exciting new approach to flower painting with step-by-step demonstrations for creating contemporary flower portraits and landscapes that are truly unique.This is more than a 'how-to' on flower painting. It is a guide encouraging artists to explore new and exciting ways to create flower paintings bursting with individuality and moving towards a contemporary and impressionist style.Mixed-media artist Soraya French, well known for her gloriously vibrant flower paintings, shares the secrets of her work, with expert advice on all aspects of this endlessly rewarding subject. The book covers: *Colours, shapes, patterns and textures particular to various flowers through the seasons, from fresh green foliage in the spring to rich red and gold hues in the autumn. *How to incorporate flowers in both still life and landscape paintings, pictured in woodlands, seascapes, meadows and hedgerows as well as vases. *How to assemble the perfect palette for flower painting and how to mix vibrant secondary colours, subtle tints and natural greens. *The huge range of painting materials available today, from traditional watercolour to vividly coloured wax pastels to innovative textural mediums such as crackle paste and glass bead gel. *The secrets of good composition and how to lead the eye around a painting, giving a sense of rhythm and movement while maintaining unity and harmony.Packed with exciting new ideas and illustrated with stunning examples of Soraya's own work, this book will take your flower painting to a new level and help you find your unique visual voice.

Anatomy for Artists is an extensive compendium of high quality, detailed photography and drawings, showing the human figure in a variety of shapes, sizes and poses that can be used as a solid foundation for all character art.This thorough and detailed library of visual resources will consist of stunning photography and comprehensive drawings showing the muscular structure of figures of varying body types. These male and female references will act as an invaluable starting point for artists trying to create art based on the human figure. Whether you're a traditional sculptor, oil painter or 3D digital artist, the resources within this book will prove to be useful and informative and will help you improve the quality and accuracy of your own art.

Turn the pages of this lavishly-produced book to discover a collection of monsters, creatures, and characters created by self-taught concept artist Francisco Garces, AKA Dibujante Nocturno. The artist and illustrator shares his journey, revealing how his self-taught skills have evolved over the years, resulting in the demonic yet exquisite style that has earned him over 400,000 followers on Instagram. In addition to a specially curated gallery of his past work, there are new pieces created exclusively for this book, including step-by-step tutorials that break down not only the artist's workflow and routine, but also his intricate pen linework techniques, cleverly chosen color palettes, and detailed rendering. Being self-taught, the artist has honed his skills in a completely unique way, allowing readers to glean not only unique tips and techniques, but also inspiration and insight into how they can practise, improve, and develop their own style. His experience of teaching art ensures he knows how to effectively communicate ideas, concepts and practical techniques. From his elegantly drawn linework to the darkest character creation, this is a unique opportunity for fans of fantasy art and creature design to see what goes into the epic art of Dibujante Nocturno.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Over the past half century, computing has profoundly altered the ways stories are imagined and told. Immersive, narrative, and database technologies transform creative practices and hybrid spaces revealing and concealing the most fundamental acts of human invention: making stories. The Digital Imaginary illuminates these changes by bringing leading North American and European writers, artists and scholars, like Sharon Daniel, Stuart Moulthrop, Nick Montfort, Kate Pullinger and Geof Bowker, to engage in discussion about how new forms and structures change the creative process. Through interviews, commentaries and meta-commentaries, this book brings fresh insight into the creative process from differing, disciplinary perspectives, provoking questions for makers and readers about meaning, interpretation and utterance. The Digital Imaginary will be an indispensable volume for anyone seeking to understand the impact of digital technology on contemporary culture, including storymakers, educators, curators, critics, readers and artists, alike.

This extraordinary seven-part book covers the processes of creating 13 projects -- from pencils to vases to bicycles -- for all personalities, skill levels and interests. It is specifically designed for students, beginning welders, hobbyists, and do-it-yourselfers. Many of the plans have been built multiple times by students and others. The plans are easy to read and the projects are meant to motivate the reader to want to learn the welding and fabrication processes. All plans include a list of materials, dimensions, special notes as needed., plus any commentaries about special equipment that might be necessary to compete the projects.Kristi Richardson McCoy is a self-taught welding instructor, with over 16 years of teaching and studying the welding process. Each year she has striven to learn something new about the field, weather it is the certification process, finishes and paints, or trying something new like underwater welding. She earned certification in SMAW and GMAW. Having an art background has helped her develop a creative teaching style that holds the interests of students who might otherwise be intimidated by the welding environment. McCoy teaches Computer-Aided Drafting, Electronics, Woodworking, Basic Welding, Advanced Welding,and Welding Sculpture at Spearfish High School in south Dakota. Part 1: Beginning Gas Metal Arc Welding. Part 2: Beginning Shielded Metal Arc Welding Projects. Part 3: Gas Welding Projects. Part 4: Beginning Gas Tungsten Arc Welding. Part 5: Bending Wrought Iron Projects. Part 6: Metal & Wood

Living Histories is a collection of new scholarship that explores histories of art education through a series of international contexts. The first truly international text highlighting histories of art education, with contributions from over 30 scholars based in 18 countries. Art education holds an important role in promoting historical awareness of the multiple relations that connect pedagogic inquiry with culture, heritage, place and identity, locally and globally. To keep pace with the movements of art and society, Garnet and Sinner consider that art education requires more inclusive and holistic versions of history from transnational perspectives that break down barriers and cross borders in the pursuit of more informed and diverse understandings of the field. The broad focus of this edited collection is to provide both new perspectives of art education from around the world, and to introduce transnationalism into the field as a way to conceptualize the entanglements of historical research in our globalized age. Transnational histories of art education focus on the linkages and flows that shift focus away from the nation-state to other transnational actors such as individuals, communities, institutions and/or organizations. Contributions from scholars and educators based and working in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, India, Iran, Japan, Malta, South Africa, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, UK, USA and Zimbabwe. Includes chapters that adapt an approach of 'artwork histories' to explore the legacies of art education as an anticipatory mode of historical thinking and practice across the visual arts and sites of art education. The book offers an opportunity for authentic engagement and intellectual risk, which includes the rejection of 'correct' interpretations of historical problems. As active agents, art education historians are not passive collectors of the past, but engaged in new ways of doing history predicated on cultivating stories that move beyond representation to attend to aesthetic dimensions that bridge historiography, material culture, oral history, art history and teacher education. Living Histories provides an interpretation of historical thinking and consciousness through the interrelations of time and space to provoke critical and creative practices in education. This is the latest book in the Artwork Scholarship series, which aims to invite debate on, and provide an essential resource for transnational scholars engaged in, creative research involving visual, literary and performative arts. With contributors from 18 countries, this book will have a substantial international readership among art educators and those interested in the history of art education, primarily in universities and colleges. It will also be particularly useful for graduate students. It will also appeal to scholars in arts education more broadly - music education, dance education, theatre education scholars, cultural and art historians, art theorists, international educators, and curators.

"Kriota Willberg's Draw Stronger is a life-saver. Every artist--pro and amateur alike--needs to memorize this essential little book." -- Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, The Sculptor "Kriota Willberg's Draw Stronger is an indispensable guide to help artists and writers practice self care and sustain their artistic practice. The ups and downs of the creative process can be a pain in the butt but it doesn't have to be a pain in the neck, back, and arms too." -- James Sturm, Director of The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) "A concise, thoughtful, and informative manual that should be required reading for all aspiring (and aging) cartoonists." -- Adrian Tomine, author of Killing and Dying Draw Stronger is a comprehensive self-care guide for artists interested in preventing repetitive stress injuries and sustaining a pain free life long drawing practice. Understand how injuries happen and what types of injuries commonly affect drawing professionals. Use practical first aide to help manage pain in the event of injury. Learn what types of symptoms should be diagnosed by doctor. Practice simple exercises to help correct posture and reduce fatigue and pain. Clearly illustrated, informative, and packed with wholesome corrective goodness, this graphic novel can get you started practicing simple routines that will help take care of your most important drawing instrument - your body! Cartoonist Kriota Willberg draws from decades of experience as a massage therapist and educator in health sciences and the arts, creating a comprehensive guide to injury prevention for cartoonists. Her comics appear in: SubCultures, Awesome Possum 3, 4PANEL, Strumpet 5, Comics for Choice, Graphic Canon; and the journals Intima and Broken Pencil. She is the first-ever artist-in-residence at the New York Academy of Medicine Library.

Illustrator and concept artist Devin Elle Kurtz shares her journey, from childhood ambitions to be an artist and finding the best educational fit, to working in the industry as she continues to develop her craft. The Art of Devin Elle Kurtz bursts with the stunning color, light, and storytelling that Devin has mastered, using traditional and digital methods. This is a unique opportunity to learn from a young industry professional. Devin recalls navigating educational opportunities, looking for the combination of formal classes and personal study that suited her needs. Color and light play a huge part - whether she uses traditional or digital techniques - and specially commissioned tutorials give aspiring artists the chance to sample her methods while evolving their skills. Readers will also enjoy the intriguing subject of storytelling, as Devin explores the themes that feature the most in her own work, including where they originated from. These insights and reflections are not only fascinating, but also help readers unlock their own authentic storytelling potential. Devin has been handpicked to join the ranks of superstar artists who have produced their Art of... books with 3dtotal Publishing, creating the unique blend of advice, tutorials, inspiration, and galleries that we love to see.

Creative Block: Kids! is a fun and practical art book for children (and their parents!) to start experimenting with creative ideas, play with art and test out new materials and means of making art. It encourages children to play with their creativity, develop new skills and have fun with the results. They are the artist in charge and get to make all the decisions to create their own weird and wonderful work that they would not explore at school. Creative Block: Kids! wants children to have fun and explore their creative ideas. If you can imagine it, you can make it!

The unique, dynamic learning system that has helped thousands of artists enhance their figure drawing abilities Dozens of updated illustrations and all-new content, exclusive to the 3rd edition Select pages can be scanned by your smartphone or other device to pull up bonus video content, enhancing the learning process

This repackaged edition of this best-selling guide to anatomy in art that will help artists of all levels to improve their life-drawing skills. Unlock your inner artist and discover how to draw the human body in this beautifully-illustrated art book by celebrated artist and teacher, Sarah Simblet. Whether you're looking to develop a new skill this New Year, or develop your drawing skills even further, this visually-striking guide offers a fresh approach to drawing the human body. Dive straight in to discover: -Over 250 specially-commissioned photographs and drawings -Covers each part of the human body from head to toe -10 masterclasses demonstrate how famous artists have depicted the human body -Practical advice and top-tips on life drawing Combining stunning photographs of models with historical and contemporary works of art and her own dynamic life drawing, Sarah will take you on a journey inside the human body to map its skeleton, muscle groups and body systems. Bring your artwork to life in the most dynamic way possible, with detailed line drawings superimposed over photographs to reveal the links between the body's appearance and it's construction. Featuring inspirational master classes on world-famous artworks, from Michelangelo to Hans Holbein, Ingres to Degas and more, discover how artists have depicted the human body over centuries. Each master class features a photograph of a model holding the same pose as in the painting, to highlight key details of anatomy and show how the artist has interpreted them. Understanding anatomy is the foundation to understanding the human body successfully. As well as being the perfect reference, Anatomy for the Artist will inspire you to find a model, reach for your pencil and start drawing! Let DK plant the seed of curiosity and watch as it develops into a life-long love of art, anatomy and more. A must-have volume for artists of all levels who wish to tackle life drawing, or those interested in human anatomy, whether as a gift or self-purchase.

The overall subject of the book is visual culture. What sets it apart and gives it such an original emphasis is its multi-disciplinarity and the range of critical voices, ranging through film studies, architecture, creative practice, biology, pedagogy and media theory, which are brought to bear upon the question of visuality and its relationship to futurity. In our everyday lives, we navigate across a vast sea of visual imagery. Yet, we rarely pause to question how or why we derive meaning from this sea. Nor do we typically contemplate the impact that it has on our motivations, our assumptions about science and about other people, and our actions as individuals and collectives. This book is a collection of interdisciplinary perspectives, from science to film, from graffiti and virtual environments to architecture and education that examines the ways in which we interact and engage with the visual elements of our environments. Visual Futures provides an interdisciplinary examination of how we visualize and use visuals to make meaning within our environment. A diverse range of contributions and perspectives from biology, film, virtual reality, urban graffiti, architecture, critical pedagogy and education challenge our current attitudes, norms and practices of looking and seeing, opening up questions about the future. The future is a concept with significant political stakes and the work of rethinking and reimagining possible worlds requires a host of practices, which include the work of seeing, of image-making and of representation - all of which is political work taken up by the book contributors. Primary readership will be among scholars and students of visual culture, media studies, digital cultures, fine art, architecture, education, science communication and sociology. Clearly aimed at an academic readership, it will also appeal to practising artists, architects, software developers and educators.

The aim of this book is to examine the geometry of our world and, by blending theory with a variety of every-day examples, to stimulate the imagination of the readers and develop their geometric intuition. It tries to recapture the excitement that surrounded geometry during the Renaissance as the development of perspective drawing gathered pace, or more recently as engineers sought to show that all the world was a machine. The same excitement is here still, as enquiring minds today puzzle over a random-dot stereogram or the interpretation of an image painstakingly transmitted from Jupiter.The book will give a solid foundation for a variety of undergraduate courses, to provide a basis for a geometric component of graduate teacher training, and to provide background for those who work in computer graphics and scene analysis. It begins with a self-contained development of the geometry of extended Euclidean space. This framework is then used to systematically clarify and develop the art of perspective drawing and its converse discipline of scene analysis and to analyze the behavior of bar-and-joint mechanisms and hinged-panel mechanisms. Spherical polyhedra are introduced and scene analysis is applied to drawings of these and associated objects. The book concludes by showing how a natural relaxation of the axioms developed in the early chapters leads to the concept of a matroid and briefly examines some of the attractive properties of these natural structures.

50 of Donna's favorite projects in one gorgeous book

Donna Dewberry flowers are beautiful to behold, and they are beautifully simple to create. You can achieve the same loveliness using her easy-to-master One-Stroke painting techniques. Inside, you'll see how--step by simple step. Pages are abloom with Donna's favorite flowers (soon to be your favorites, too ), fabulous landscapes, and garden projects to make your outside space a happier place.

An intro chapter covers all the basics, from selecting your tools and loading your brush, to fundamental brushstrokes, palette knife painting techniques, and instructions for painting a variety of beautiful backgrounds. Then follow along step by step to create:

• 38 flowers--cottage garden blooms, spring bulb flowers, wildflowers, herbs, exotics, floral motifs and more.
• 7 beautiful outdoor projects, including an address sign, a trio of butterfly houses, and a patio clock.
• 5 fast and fabulous landscapes, from wildflower fields to a tropical paradise.

You Are an Artist is for everyone who wants to be an artist, but has been too afraid to take the plunge. It combines a thought-provoking meditation on art practice with a series of practical exercises and creative provocations that encourage everyone to fulfil their potential as an artist. The book is itself a kind of art school, helping the reader to work out what kind of artist they are, and what they can achieve. Drawing on the author's experience as an art school teacher, it playfully adapts the methods of art education, mixing these with the sideways approach to creativity popularized by the author's activist campaigns. Smith provides an array of ideas, tips and practical examples, illustrated with documentary photographs of his own specially made work. His riotous paintings and installations are set alongside discussions of time, place, looking, thinking, stealing and becoming, with enlightening forays into the history of art and creativity. A collection of hilarious, at times startling and often moving narratives bring to life a series of lessons about the nature of art and inspiration. Each lesson comes with a series of prompts to harness the reader's own artistic capabilities. Whether we like it or not, says Bob and Roberta Smith, we have been enrolled in the world, and the world is an art school. You are an artist, because every human being who has ever lived was once an artist.

What do toothpicks, dryer lint, plastic bottles, and soup cans have in common? They are all items that have been used to create art! Found art is a type of art that involves creating pieces from found objects that are not usually considered to be artistic. Learn how these ordinary objects are made into beautiful art. Created in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, this STEAM book will ignite a curiosity about STEAM topics through real-world examples. It features a hands-on STEAM challenge that is perfect for makerspaces and that guides students step-by-step through the engineering design process. Make STEAM career connections with career advice from Smithsonian employees working in STEAM fields. Ideal for school reports and projects, this informational text will appeal to reluctant readers and ages 6-8.

A comprehensive and practical guide full of advice and inspiration for anyone wishing to capture the beauty of the urban landscape. The wonderful thing about drawing buildings is that, wherever you travel around the globe, you will never be short of subjects to inspire you. From the most elaborate of Renaissance cathedrals, through to the humble garden shed, you will always be able to practise your skills and learn a few techniques in the process. This hands-on and inspirational book will encourage you to meet the exciting challenges of drawing and painting buildings using a variety of media and a wide range of techniques, including pencil, pen, graphite powder, watercolour, water-soluble pencils and Indian ink. As you work through this book, you will look at materials and their qualities then move on to explore how to put these materials to best use when drawing specific types of building. You will be led gently through levels of learning, with easy and more challenging exercises progressing your knowledge and developing your skills. As the book is divided into discrete sections, you can dip in to a particular type of building that you wish to draw, and use the information and illustration provided, while extended teaching exercises take you through the way the author approaches composing and completing a drawing. Fully annotated paintings, working drawings and extended projects reveal how each effect was achieved. Detailed artworks in a range of styles and media are thoroughly annotated to demonstrate key techniques and important details and there are invaluable exercises for understanding perspective, negative and positive space, tone, choosing details and constructing large-scale images. The book includes thorough studies of a wide range of different architectural styles, from town houses to rural cottages and barns, from churches and classical architecture to continental cafes and street scenes. Taylor's exquisite drawings and paintings demonstrate the quality of the results that can be achieved by following his helpful guidance and advice.

An essential handbook for studio potters working towards achieving a fantastic spectrum of colourful glazes. Colour in Glazes teaches you all the methods for achieving colour in glazes, focusing on colouring oxides in detail, including the newly available rare earth oxides. Find out about the types of base glazes and the fluxes used to make them in relation to colour response as well as using colouring oxides to achieve depth and variety of colour, rather than resorting to commercial ceramic stains. Discover the practical aspects of mixing, applying, testing and adjusting glazes, and explore a large section of test tiles and glaze recipes for use on white earthenware, stoneware and porcelain fired in electric, gas and salt kilns. This new edition, fully updated and revised, contains advances in technology and new discoveries in the Periodic Table. It is an infallible handbook to achieving the colour you want, and to help you broaden your palette.