Chinese brush painting is an ancient art, steeped in history, symbolism and ritual, and closely linked to Chinese calligraphy. This beautifully illustrated book takes you on a journey through the history, techniques and materials that will enable you to produce stunning paintings of flowers, birds, animals and landscapes. Topics covered include: he history of Chinese painting materials and how to use them; advice on basic brush strokes, colour mixing and brush loading; step-by-step guide to completing a composition of a variety of subjects and finally, instruction on mounting your work for display. Written by a respected artist and teacher, it covers traditional techniques as well as more recent innovative ideas, and reveals the beauty and mastery behind this art.

Painting in mixed media combines all the excitement and potential of different materials and techniques, while giving the artist the opportunity to express themselves without any of the limitations of each separate medium. Whether you love the vibrancy of pastels, the versatility of acrylics or the dynamism of collage, this book shows you how to combine them to make a unique piece of art. Alongside Soraya's beautiful paintings, it encourages the artist to express themselves, to experiment with their own creative ideas and to enjoy the magical potential of painting in mixed media.

Miniatures are not simply small paintings: special techniques are used to achieve their unique glow and luminosity. This book explains how to paint in detail in a small format with colour and precision. It gives an introduction to the history and traditions of miniatures set by Holbein, Hilliard and Oliver. Advice is given on materials, paints, bases and framing and there are step-by-step demonstrations of stippling and hatching, watercolour and oil painting, and colour mixing. There is a focus also on portraits, still life and silhouettes. Drawing on her extensive experience, Pauline Denyer-Baker shares her passion for painting miniatures, and inspires both beginners and more experienced artists to master and enjoy this historic art form.

If you are the sort of person who has ever had a spare moment at work (and let's face it who isn't) then this is the book for you. A neat little pocket format means you will never be without access to its stress-relieving pages. Finish the doodles, create your own and generally have fun at work with the Bored at Work Pocket Doodle Book! Creative, fun, partly finished doodles and other ideas adorn every page of this hilarious book. Sharpen your pencil to scribble in the spaces, colour in the shapes and add your own works of art.

An award-winning fantasy artist and the creator of "Dinotopia," James Gurney instructs and inspires in "Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist." Renowned for his uncanny ability to incorporate amazing detail and imagination into stunningly realistic fantasy settings, James Gurney teaches budding artists and fans of fantasy art step-by-step the techniques that won him worldwide critical acclaim. This groundbreaking work examines the practical methods for creating believable pictures of imaginary subjects, such as dinosaurs, ancient Romans, alien creatures, and distant worlds.
Beginning with a survey of imaginative paintings from the Renaissance to the golden Age of American illustration, the book then goes on to explain not just techniques like sketching and composition, but also the fundamentals of believable world building including archaeology, architecture, anatomy for creatures and aliens, and fantastic engineering. It concludes with details and valuable advice on careers in fantasy illustration, including video game and film concept art and toy design.
More than an instruction book, this is the ultimate reference for fans of science fiction and fantasy illustration.
"Gurney's "Imaginative Realism" is a gold mine for artists who want to create images that sing with authority and delight the viewer with rich otherworldly visuals." --Erik Tiemens, concept artist, "Star Wars: Episodes II and III"
""Imaginative Realism" is an indispensable, flawless reference for vision makers in any discipline to create their own imaginative realms." --Frank M. Costantino, ASAI, SI, FSAI, JARA, cofounder, American Society of Architectural Illustrators

Learn how use oil paints with this clear and simple guide. Accomplished artist and teacher Norman Long explains all the basics and shows you how to master this versatile, vibrant medium so you can produce beautiful paintings full of life and color. Oils has a handy front section covering all the practical stuff, from choosing the right materials to essential techniques. 10 step-by-step tutorials each broken down into key stages range of subject matter from still life to landscapes to figures clear step-by-step photography and instructions includes special features on painting people, painting outdoors and composition tips and practical advice to help make the most of your paints

Tell your own story in comic-book form with this blank journal--already formatted with panels! An intro from art instruction superstar Christopher Hart will get you started. Whether they're interested in producing comic strips, manga, or graphic novels, aspiring illustrators can begin their own artistic journey with this specially produced journal. Every page features blank, black-framed panels formatted in the comic-book style, and separate sections throughout allow artists to create several different stories. Those with more experience can use the journal to flesh out their narrative and visual ideas, while beginners can experiment with the format and see where it takes them. The possibilities for self-expression are endless!

Whether you need to draw a cat, a flying squirrel, or a sea horse, How to Draw Almost Every Animal is your ultimate go-to guide! Not sure how to start your drawing of a flamingo or slippery slug? Boggled by how to draw an antelope, an armadillo, or a cheetah? How to Draw Almost Every Animal is here to help! Need to draw a hippopotamus? A lazy, brown dog? A quick, red fox? Then this collection of over 75 adorable animals to draw and doodle is just the book for you! This teaching tool does more than just show you completed pictures of the animals. Each illustration is broken down with step-by-step diagrams and helpful tips to truly teach you how to draw. Plus, we've included extra images to teach you how to draw animals relaxing in their natural habitats and on the move. A helpful how-to section includes valuable coloring tips and techniques for mastering fur and feather, spots, stripes, scales, spines, and everything else animals are covered in. Each book in the Almost Everything series offers readers a fun, comprehensive, and charmingly illustrated visual directory of ideas to inspire skill building in their creative endeavors.

Take everyday poses and make them extraordinary! Learn to draw people in a variety of different poses with Drawing Manga People and Poses. Lessons begin with the basics--drawing from photos, vantage points, people and objects. Once you've got the basics covered, you'll follow along with step by steps and find tips and advice for "everyday," "around the house" and "at work and play" poses. All in all, you'll find more than 800 poses to emulate and make your own! Drawing Manga People and Poses also includes helpful Q & A sections, covering subjects like drawing from reference materials, understanding skeletal and muscular anatomy, drawing cartoons and how to know when a project is finished. Learn to draw: Important basic drawing lessons, including scaling, dimension, perspective and more Lessons and samples for drawing poses from everyday life, like texting, opening a wallet and eating Around-the-house poses such as opening doors and windows, getting dressed and cleaning At work and play poses including using a computer, taking photos, stretching and playing video games With more than 800 poses, you're well on your way to creating any character you can imagine!

Simple step-by-step lessons for drawing 60 animals + video tutorials via QR codes! Drawing Class: Animals is a collection of 60 fun, beginner-level lessons for drawing whimsical animals in pencil and colored pencil. Written and illustrated by artist and author Heegyum Kim, the fun, easy lessons-one for every animal-present step-by-step illustrations and instructions demonstrating how each one is drawn in pencil, with each step showing how and where to add simple shapes to create a wide variety of comical creatures, including: Home and Farm: Cat, Dog, Horse, Pig Woodlands, Plains, and Grasslands: Brown Bear, Moose, Elephant, Wolf Crawlers and Fliers: Cricket, Dragonfly, Hummingbird, Quail Rainforest: Iguana, Jaguar, Sloth, Orangutan Sea, Shore, and Wetlands: Alligator, Walrus, Frog, Shark Legendary Creatures: Dinosaur, Dodo, Unicorn For extra inspiration, several colored pencil versions of each animal are shown, along with a special feature-QR codes that give you access to a bonus video tutorial for every animal! Sharpen your pencils-it's time for Drawing Class: Animals!

With this high-quality sketchbook, experienced and aspiring manga artists can take what they've learned about drawing manga and create their own manga graphic novels. The opening pages of this sketchbook include information on filling the panels, creating drama with angles, using speech balloons, and creating special effects. After that, the book is divided into six sections, each with a cover template and blank, black-framed panels that allow artists to create different manga stories from start to finish. The possibilities are endless!

If you have always wanted to learn to draw but lack the confidence to start, Drawing for the Absolute Beginner is the book for you. The author, Carole Massey, is an accomplished artist with many years' experience of teaching and demonstrating, and even the most hesitant of beginners will soon pick up the skills and techniques needed to start drawing. The book is a complete drawing course, designed to help you progress from simple techniques such as lines, circles, squares and ellipses through to capturing landscapes, figures and buildings. There are numerous simple step-by-step demonstrations as well as larger projects, and outline tracings are provided of the more complex drawings that you can transfer straight onto your paper, if you wish to use them. Most of the artworks in the book are created using pencil, but the author also uses ink, ballpoint pen, pastel pencil and watersoluble pencils to encourage you to experiment with other media too. By the end of the book, you will have learnt all you need to know to take your drawing skills further and become an accomplished artist in your own right.

Folk Art is a colouring book for adults that contains 30 amazing art activities involving patterning, shading and colouring. Each vibrantly detailed, charming and international folk illustration offers an easy way to de-stress, while allowing you to unleash the artist within.Thaneeya McArdle's transcendental art explores a visual language of shape, form, line and colour, and can be easily personalised with felt- tips, coloured pencils, crayons, gel pens, or watercolours.Beautifully coloured finished examples are provided, along with a handy guide to basic art techniques, from patterning and combinations to shading and colour theory.Both traditional and contemporary artworks are included, inspired by the living cultures of indigenous people around the world.This therapeutic colouring book is printed on high-quality, extra-thick paper that won't bleed through, and all of the pages are perforated for easy removal and display.

Turn that old, dilapidated chair that has been sitting in your garage or basement into a decorative piece of art for your children's bedroom or playroom. In this new DIY book, master painter Sammie Crawford takes you through seven step-by-step chair-painting projects: bear, bunny, Mother Goose, panda, puppy, Raggedy Ann and Andy, and Wild Animals. There's also a bonus Christmas Rocking Horse project. With color photographs and patterns, as well as lists of supplies and color palettes, this book gives you the details you need to replicate the designs in full or add your own creative ideas. This book is perfect for painters of all skill levels.

Petra Thoelken's practical and inspiring book examines what it means to make an abstract work of art. She encourages the reader to consider the subjects of composition, planes, and subject and expression, while also examining the more practical topics of colour theory and colour mixing, how to work with pigment, canvas and priming, spatula techniques and working with unconventional backgrounds. All these elements build up into a vocabulary of visual pointers from which the reader can begin to explore their own adventurousness and creativity. Through the 20 beautiful projects that Petra demonstrates, step by step, readers will learn how to create texture, work with unusual tools and create soft transitions or high contrast. Her clarity of thought and inspirational advice will open your eyes to a whole new way of seeing your paintings and achieving the self-expression that leads to visually exciting and technically innovative work. For some of the projects, there are links to Petra's popular YouTube videos, demonstrating how she created the individual paintings.

Start with a heart shape . . . and end with a beautiful finished piece of art!You'll love Jane Davenport's fabulous, fun, and amazingly easy technique for drawing figures. For aspiring artists, drawing people can be intimidating--but it doesn't have to be. Over years working as a fashion illustrator, Jane Davenport devised her own method of creating in-proportion figures. Her clever core technique involves using equal-size hearts to build the body's structure. And Jane's results have been astounding: her students go from "I can't draw a stick figure" to producing gorgeous, well-proportioned illustrations. After laying out the basics, her imaginative guide walks you through working with different mediums; drawing the head, face, clothing, hair, and features; and constructing figures inspired by fashion, fantasy, life drawing, and more.

Learn how to draw your favorite furry friend! With Christopher Hart's simple templates, any pet owner can do it. Whatever your pet, you can capture it in a beautiful drawing! Chris Hart, the world's bestselling art instruction author, has created templates that work for pups and kitties of just about any shape and size--from poodles, dachshunds, and Bernese Mountain Dogs to tabbies, Persians, and Siamese cats. Every template is easy to follow so you'll get adorable results worthy of framing . . . no matter what your skill level.

During his career as one of America's most sought-after illustrators, Andrew Loomis (1889-1959) taught at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and in 1939 he codified his lessons in his first manual, "Fun with a Pencil." Four years later it had already been through six printings, and he followed up over the next two decades with a series of even more successful how-to books that remain the gold standard for artists to this day.
"Creative Illustration" is considered Loomis's magnum opus, which was aimed primarily at the professional-level illustrator. Divided into seven sections: Line, Tone, Color, Telling the Story, Creating Ideas, Fields of Illustration, and Experimenting and Studies, this book is filled with instructions, tips, insider experiences, and incredible illustrations.

Featuring more than 600 sketches depicting a vast array of architecturally and culturally significant buildings, bridges, towers, monuments, and more, Draw Like an Artist: 100 Buildings and Architectural Forms is a must-have visual reference for student and aspiring architects, artists, illustrators, and urban sketchers. This contemporary step-by-step guidebook demonstrates fundamental art and architectural concepts like proportion, perspective, and spatial relationships as you learn to draw a wide range of important residential, commercial, historic, and cultural buildings, bridges, towers, and other structures from all over the world and from ancient to modern-all shown from a variety of perspectives and scales. Each set of illustrations takes you from beginning sketch lines to a finished drawing. Author David Drazil's classic drawing style will make this a go-to sourcebook for years to come. Learn how to establish basic shapes; articulate lines for structure, forms, and shading; and add defining details by drawing these celebrated sites and many others: Residential: Fallingwater in the US and the Silo in Copenhagen Commercial: Dancing House in Prague and Sugamo Shinkin Bank in Tokyo Monuments/Sacred: Stonehenge in the UK and the Cathedral of Brasilia Bridges: Jade Belt Bridge in Beijing and the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Sydney, Australia Draw Like an Artist: 100 Buildings and Architectural Forms is a library essential for any artist or architect who's interested in learning how to draw and explore the underlying design principles of influential constructions. The books in the Draw Like an Artist series are richly visual references for learning how to draw classic subjects realistically through hundreds of step-by-step images created by expert artists and illustrators.

Find beauty and happiness in nature and create beautiful drawings and prints with this stunning guide to the mindful art of drawing floral patterns. Drawing can be a powerful tool to combat anxiety, stress and depression. In From Petal to Pattern, New York-based pattern designer and illustrator Michelle Parascandolo teaches us how the act of drawing repeated floral shapes can connect us to nature, reminding us to look around ourselves and notice the world which surrounds us. With step-by-step guides to 20 intricate patterns for us to recreate at home, this gifty how-to book helps us explore the meditative practice of drawing through the creation of repeating flower patterns. From bouquets to blocks of densely-packed flowers, the botanical patterns in this book cover all styles, from folk art to tropical, and also offers tips for creating your own original designs. With mindful affirmations as well as flower facts and lore, this book combines creative self-expression with art-therapy principles and an appreciation of the natural world. Accessible for all artistic abilities, from total beginners to experienced artists, this book teaches us how to make these colourful and bright designs into attractive prints, so you can apply them to materials of your choosing to fill your home with beautiful blossoms!

These 90 magnificent designs--from elaborately detailed elephants to skulls, dragons, and eagles--just beg to be colored in. Use them for meditative downtime . . . or to inspire a real tattoo!

One of the difficulties about how our minds work is that we often cannot quite clearly see or know what is inside us. Art therapists have a longstanding tradition of prescribing image-making to prompt expression of feelings, often by asking people to draw, paint, or sculpt "how you feel." It is one of the fundamental approaches in the field that distinguishes art therapy from verbal techniques that ask people to simply talk about their emotions. Author Erica Jong once wrote that imagery is a form of emotional shorthand. This could be interpreted to mean that while we may use paragraphs of prose to describe an emotional experience, images allow us to communicate simply and directly. At its core, art therapy embraces the paradigm that creating images cuts to the chase when it comes to expressing feelings. The point is not to draw well. But to draw with authenticity. This is specifically a book for people who can't draw.

This is not your staid, buttoned-up painting course! Instead, popular teacher and artist Alena Hennessy takes an open, unintimidating approach, encouraging beginners to play, experiment, and discover their own personal style. She offers simple step-by-step instructions, tips on tools and materials, and 50 beautifully illustrated creativity prompts - from Working in Circles and Repetition to Wash and Drip and Layering-to spark readers' imaginations. If you're seeking to add new skills to your creative repertoire, while also working in a more intuitive way, The Painting Workbook will help you gain the inspiration and knowledge!

Part of the "Coloring Books for the Soul" series, a dazzlingly beautiful adult coloring book, filled with magical, mystical imagery that celebrates the major and minor arcana of the tarot-a creative and inspiring invitation to nourish our souls and reconnect with our spirit. The Enchanted Tarot coloring book features the award-winning illustrations from Amy Zerner and Monte Farber's bestselling, classic tarot deck. Drawn in Amy's iconic tapestry collage art style, each illustration is a work of art that takes reads on a soothing, meditative journey to a world of myth and majesty, beauty and illumination. The forty line drawings are accompanied by text that guides colorists through each suit of the deck, introducing all the key players of the major and minor arcana, from The Fool to The Magician to The Empress. Gorgeously packaged with a vibrant four-color cover by the artist and filled with fresh, modern illustrations suitable for framing, The Enchanted Tarot is an ideal way to unwind and create beauty in our lives.