Bridging the gap between craft and art, this book showcases ways to use simple craft techniques to create original display art. Learn to produce modern-art canvases and block art using any-thing from traditional acrylics and oils to crack filler, cement and sand on various supports. Stunning commissioned photographs of all finished projects, accompanied by step-by-step instructions, show you how and will awaken the budding artist in you. Basic techniques, colour, texture mediums, adhesives, solvents, finishes and sealants are all covered, with a useful glossary of requirements and tools filling in any gaps. This book features the most popular projects from Quick art, Smart art and Fast art.

Margaret Bloom's book introduces us to over 60 peg doll characters to keep hands busy. This series of delightful craft projects will inspire all the family to make and play creatively.

In this book Edward Lucie-Smith considers the achievement of John Singer Sargent in response to a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. This exhibition features Sargent's more private works - images of friends, rather than portraits painted on commission. In many ways Sargent is an ambiguous figure. The child of wealthy expatriate American parents, he was brought up in Europe, at first made his career in France, then settled in Britain. Totally cosmopolitan, he kept his American nationality, painted many American sitters, but never lived for any extended period of time in the United States, either as a child or as an adult. During his time in France he consorted with a number of artists who, at a certain point in their careers, were thought of as cutting edge. Monet is a prime example. However, his more intimate artist friends, such as Helleu, whom he painted a number of times, were not radicals, and always second-or-third rankers. Sexually he is a mystery. Biographers have tended to classify him according to their own sexual preferences, rather like the biographers of Caravaggio. For some he was a closeted gay man, for others he was definitely a lover of women. He never married and there is no proof of any liaisons, either heterosexual or homosexual. Paintings of subjects from his own social circle, made for his own pleasure rather than on commission, suggest that while he liked handsome young men, he was also fascinated by women of dominant temperament. His own mother was apparently a woman of this type. Easily social with friends, he nevertheless fiercely guarded his essential privacy. There is a parallel here with his somewhat older contemporary Lord Leighton, another hugely successful bachelor artist. Both men were strikingly masculine in appearance. In terms of his later reputation, Sargent was long regarded as a paradigmatic example of an artist who was immensely skilful but in no way truly experimental - someone who fitted perfectly into the wealthy society of his time. The reconsideration of Sargent that is now taking place has parallels with the reconsideration of Gustav Klimt, which got its start a little earlier. Neither one of them can really be described as 'avant-garde' in any meaningful sense of that much-abused term, but we have now started to see them as being extremely significant as makers of images that somehow sum up their epoch without sacrifice of aesthetic quality. Their paintings still resonate with the contemporary audience today.