Relax and unwind the creative way! Learn to use drawing as a pathway to relaxation with the creative art exercises and soothing meditations found inside this inspiring book. Anyone who has ever experienced a relaxed, calm state while doodling understands the powerful connection between hand and mind. From flowing one-line designs to calm-inducing repetitive patterns, drawing can put us into a state of flow. And, with this book, you'll return to that feeling repeatedly with the meditative exercises offered. Each exercise includes instructions, a pattern, and a practice area for drawing. Also included are guided meditations in the form of key words to ponder as you draw. Finally, inspirational quotes and short prompts help you put each lesson into practice. A more calm, present, and mindful moment is waiting. A pencil and this book are all that's needed!

Anyone wanting to develop their drawing skills, as well as artists, teachers and students, will enjoy the creative challenge of form drawing. Regular practise can help discover what the art of line can mean. Drawing skills are developed through systematic exercises, and can develop self-confidence, balance and tranquillity. Simple form drawing is used in Steiner?Waldorf schools as a companion discipline to handwriting and drawing skills. It offers a healthy antidote to screen culture.

Artists & Illustrators magazine's Book of the Month Taking inspiration from iconic paintings in the Tate collection, discover the techniques of the masters and improve your own painting skills with 30 guided projects. As you work through the exercises, you'll learn how to work 'wet into wet' with Maggi Hambling, master colour temperature with John Singer Sargent and create rhythm and unity in your paintings with John Nash. Whether you are looking to reinvigorate your watercolour practice with new techniques, try your hand at a wide variety of painting styles, or discover a new, inspiring master of the art, this book offers something new for every watercolourist.

This is a hands-on guide to learning to draw in perspective. It is partly about learning to draw a set of straight lines that meet at a point. And it's partly about learning to look at what is around you, and spot where those invisible straight lines might be located. It's a book for anyone who wants to draw or paint-in any genre and in any medium. And it's not weighed down with theory - although everything you will need to know is explained. Most of all, it gives you exercises to play with. You can put your observational skills to the test with the "image quiz" features-where you take a pen and draw in all the vanishing points onto the book itself. Or use the special "perspective chambers" to draw objects onto an existing scene, keeping it all in the right perspective: think of it as a kind of 3D doodling. By the time you get to the end of the book, you will understand how perspective works and be able to apply it intuitively without a ruler or drafting table. The whole concept will feel like a sixth sense. And you can get on with being creative. There is also a 30-page workbook to put your skills to the test!

This handy, practical and inspirational little book is perfect for the pocket or art bag. It shows watercolour painters of all levels how to loosen up their paintings and maintain spontaneity by painting simple watercolour studies in no more than 10 minutes. Written by popular artist Hazel Soan, the book is arranged in three parts: the first section explains all about the equipment you will need; the second section covers techniques and shows what can be achieved with watercolour in a short time span; the third section looks at various subjects that are ideal for painting quickly. All the essential techniques are covered, focusing particularly on maximizing brushstrokes and exploring colours, and there is useful advice on deciding what to include and what to leave out. With helpful chapters on painting a wide range of subjects - people, landscapes, seascapes, buildings, gardens, flowers and still life - this little guide is ideal for quick reference when working in the studio or out in the field.

Create authentic-looking maps of fantasy cities, hamlets, fortifications and more in a popular tabletop, RPG style. 30+ step-by-step demonstrations show you how to create your own unique RPG maps Learn how to draw fantasy cities, medieval settlements and more from a professional gaming illustrator Tips and techniques for drawing fences, stone walls, forests, fields, bridges, footpaths, mountains, harbors, shields, coats of arms and other cartography elements Put your design and drawing skills on the map!

For more than a thousand years, Eastern Christians have used their hands and hearts to create icons, proclaiming God s reality in a visible and breathtakingly beautiful way. This ancient art is enjoying a renewed interest in the West, as people of faith create icons and use them to meditate on mysteries for which there are no words.

A Brush with God is a guide to painting icons and using them in prayer. Written with warmth and energy, it describes the history of icons and examines why they ve been a spiritual tool for so many centuries. Written from a uniquely Western perspective, the book guides artists from novices to professionals through the process of icon painting, using traditional techniques but employing contemporary materials. Included are eight full-color plates of the artist s icons. "

Simply magical manga in watercolor! Learn how to create beautiful manga art from pencil sketch to finished painting, with this comprehensive guide. As the popularity of Manga art continues to soar, manga and comic book artist Lisa Santrau shows beginners how to create subtle and beautiful manga pictures using pencil and watercolors - the simplest of art materials. Lisa explains the materials and tools needed and then explores the fundamentals of how to draw manga - from color theory and breaking down drawings into basic shapes, to body proportions and faces for both classic manga and chibi manga figures. You will learn how to sketch, how to create depth in your work with shading, and a range of watercolor techniques including washes, wet-on-wet and layering, as well as special techniques involving masking fluid and an innovative 'film' technique for creating texture and patterns. The exercises that follow the basics explore a wide range of techniques including manga poses, hair and eyes, then learn about backgrounds, textures, gradients and more. Finally, there are 12 step-by-step painting projects to perfect your manga art skills, with downloadable templates if you want to skip the drawing and get straight to the painting. The projects are varied and fun, and comprise: Sweet chibi girl on a slice of cake, using the dry technique Steampunk chibis against a bright background, using the wet-on-wet technique Chibi sorcerer's apprentice in a flying teacup, with a galaxy background Chibi Harry, aka a world-famous wizard, teaching you character design Young girl framed by a romantic floral design, using a monochrome palette Sailor boy in a symbolic sun circle, created with masking fluid Girl in a kimono backlit by a window with flowers, using the white of the paper Historical heroine in a voluminous ballgown, using the film technique Melancholic schoolgirl against a fluorescent background, with the film technique Silhouette in the evening sunset, using the wet-on-wet technique Food overload boy in the land of plenty, featuring surface textures Girl's face with expressive eyes, exploring cool versus warm colors This easy-to-follow book by the creator of the popular Mechanical Princess comics, contains all you need to successfully paint your own watercolor manga art.

Award-winning artist Harriet de Winton shows you how to create contemporary watercolour artworks to treasure and share. Through more than 30 step-by-step projects, discover how to paint individual flowers and foliage, as well as beautiful botanical compositions. Use your new skills to make art for your wall, unique cards, invitations, or simply paint for pleasure.

The New Color Mixing Companion is a modern guide to mixing color and creating exciting palettes, with hands-on projects that incorporate inventive techniques. Uncover new ideas and easy methods of working with color from artist and popular Instagrammer Josie Lewis (@josielewisart), who offers fun lessons that will help you understand color in new ways, opening fresh avenues for your own artwork. This comprehensive guide begins with an introduction to color that includes the color wheel, basic color terminology, and essential supplies. Starter projects help you get comfortable with color while learning how to work with watercolor, acrylic paint, and collage. Next-level projects take your skills even further, with more innovative techniques. The book also includes easy-to-use templates with modern geometric layouts that you can use to create your own stunning color patterns. You'll also discover how to: Make gorgeous rainbow effects using a variety of materials and methods. Work and play with scraps, shapes and swatches in an array of hues that will help build your color confidence. Create beautiful texture in watercolor and acrylic paint using simple supplies and techniques. Mix colors to produce shades ranging from calming neutrals to blazing brights. Use color effectively to take your imagination to new heights. Open yourself to incredible creative possibilities with The New Color Mixing Companion!

With a great range of flowers--from daffodils, fuchsias, geraniums, and poppies to sunflowers, tulips, and water lilies--beginning artists will discover the delights of creating floral pictures from this invaluable resource. Showing how to break down basic flower shapes and add elegant detail with an easy-to-follow process, this guidebook carefully leads new drawing students through a step-by-step process, resulting in display-worthy creations.

Eggs aren't just for breakfast! With a bit of imagination, they can also be transformed into beautiful decorative items and gifts. A modern and accessible hobby, egg art is something all generations can take part in, and connect over. Egg Art feeds into the current trend of working and crafting with natural, everyday objects, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Hatch a plan and get cracking on your egg-cellent designs now!

Artists who wish to explore the world of painting with oils en plein air will love the freshness and vibrancy of the work in this book - as well as the expert, down-to-earth advice of its author. Award-winning artist Haidee-Jo explores the appeal of working outside with oils and the enormous benefits it can bring in terms of personal well-being. She also shares her techniques to allow the reader to invest their oil artwork with light, motion and life. With dozens of Haidee-Jo's artworks to provide inspiration to the reader, and clear, step-by-step demonstrations throughout, this book provides both an expert guide to the challenges, opportunities and fun of painting outdoors; and provides an insight into the working methods of this dynamic artist.

Rock Art! is the ultimate guide to painting eccentric art on rocks! This book makes it possible for anyone to create extraordinary art projects and crafts with ordinary rocks. The first part of the book will give you tips as to how to go about picking your pebbles and how to get started. You'll find that your finished rock art projects can be used in practical, stylish, fun and decorative ways. Once painted, pebbles can be used as jewellery, lucky amulets, games, love tokens, bookends, special gifts or home and garden decor objects! Get creative and use your rock painting art in a variety of crafty projects.

Line and wash is an exciting combination. This practical book shows you how to exploit the strength of ink with the transparency of watercolour to produce powerful and dynamic paintings. With over 170 illustrations, it covers a wide range of styles and subjects, before exploring mixed media, new surfaces and other ways to take your line and wash work to another level. Includes advice on choosing materials; exercises to hone your drawing and painting skills; gives inspiration for new approaches to line and wash and, finally, step-by-step demonstrations of ideas and projects. This book is a visual treat and an essential guide for all artists who want to try this exciting technique.

People of all ages are fascinated by dinosaurs. Though their huge skeletons are an impressive sight, much of our sense of childlike wonder comes from artistic depictions of them in books, museum murals and popular culture. This book is about how such 'paleoart' is created, and the process of integrating scientific findings with artistic principles to produce accurate, expressive and arresting artworks of dinosaurs and the world they lived in. Drawing and Painting Dinosaurs explores the anatomy and ecology of different types of dinosaurs including Deinonychus, Apatosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. It demonstrates how to interpret paleontological research through the lens of an artistic depiction with examples. There are over 250 illustrations feature pencil drawings, gouache, oil paint, and digital media. Step-by-step projects demonstrate the use of both traditional and digital media, the use of unique techniques and sources of reference, and building up dinosaur anatomy from basic shapes. Finally, it gives insight into how paleoart can be a means to advance knowledge through scientific analysis and prediction. With explorations of dinosaur anatomy, unique techniques for reference and a series of how-to instructions, this book will guide an aspiring paleoartist in learning how to breathe life into the past through art.

Do you know how to draw a square, triangle, and rectangle? Well, then, you know how to draw! Rough: Drawing in 2 Strokes and 3 Moves provides you with a way to start drawing that is based on a very simple observation: the human body, as well as everything surrounding us, can be broken down into elementary and basic geometric shapes. The technique that author and teacher Pierre Pochet shows you here has no fine art or academic ambitions. Instead, it shows you how to quickly draw from memory a facial expression or a bodily movement, to flesh out a picture, to create a perspective, or to sketch a scene. This approach to drawing is particularly useful for those who have no artistic training but who are considering a career in a creative field, whether that be advertising, design, or graphics . . . as well as for anyone who simply wants to learn how to draw!

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! Beverly Johnson's book is packed with scores of fun exercises that will really motivate young beginner artists who are just getting interested in drawing for animation, comic book art, or just for pleasure. In a series of beginner-friendly exercises, she explores how to conceptualize wonderful, convincing characters and shows how to translate ideas into great professional-looking drawings. The book is organized into key chapters associated with what makes engaging, three-dimensional characters. Read the advice, work your way through the exercises and you will get to the end with a portfolio bursting with wonderful creations. This book demonstrates how to create diverse characters with strong personalities, unique mannerisms and interests; how to understand their motivations, find their passions and make them come alive. Split into 75 easy-to-follow and fun exercises, Bev leads the young reader through the techniques and skills needed to create their very own characters.

The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Light is an informative guide to heightening the impact of your artwork by capturing the look and subtleties of light in any scene. In settings ranging from fields and mountains at daybreak to neon cityscapes at midnight, learn how to express light effects through color and value to improve and refine your drawings and paintings. Artist and urban sketcher Katie Woodward offers strategies for: Selectively translating values for maximum effect Using your sketchbook to experiment with the effects of natural as well as artificial light Considering many options for visual solutions through work contributed by experienced urban sketchers Master the art of rendering light with The Urban Sketching Handbook: Understanding Light as your guide. 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.

Introduces readers to a more advanced level in icon development, exploring more complex imagery and skills Step-by-step instructions for painting icons, from original drawings through finished product Includes eight full-color plates of the author's original icons This is the sequel to the authors previous work, A Brush with God, for advanced beginners, intermediate, and advanced iconographers. It presents greater detail and instructions for creating entirely new icons. One major feature of the new book is the full-page sketches that artists can photocopy and use as the basis of their own icons, providing a unique and much-requested resource. Chapters and topics include: Introduction and contemporary reflections on iconography, spirituality, and technique. Highlighting folds on full-length figures, including black and white renderings of draped legs, arms, and torsos. Architectural and landscape renderings in Byzantine iconography, including background shadow and highlighting techniques, plus inverse perspective. Festal icons, involving multiple figures, landscapes, architecture, furniture, vegetation, and animals. Construction of heads, figures, and analysis of whole compositions, sacred geometry and proportion.

Learn how to letter and create fun, adorable illustrations featuring everyday objects in this step-by-step guide-with tips, tricks, and practice space to kickstart your creative journey. In this effervescent approach to art instruction, artist Jesi Rodgers opens up her tool kit, sharing techniques, inspiration, and encouragement to teach the creatively curious how to draw and paint adorable projects. Adorable Art Class explores Jesi's quirky, bright, and captivating art style. The lessons show how to create supercute illustrations of the kinds of things we see every day: Flowers Teacup Bike Cat Taco Donut Apple Along the way, we learn about color, materials, tools, and finding your creative voice. With helpful prompts and projects using a range of techniques and mediums, from pencil sketching to marker coloring, anyone can master this cute and adorable art style.

From skies above to water below, discover the secrets to glorious landscapes

No two elements of the landscape bring the artist greater inspiration--or greater challenge--than sky and water. Get them right and you have magic. Get them wrong and your whole painting is off. In this book, popular pastel artist and teacher Liz Haywood-Sullivan shares her secrets for getting them both right, every time. With her practiced and proven approach, you can experience the joy of painting glowing skies and sparkling water.

Inside you'll find:

• 24 step-by-step demonstrations showing the creation of breathtaking skies and water in pastel.
• Techniques for painting skies, including the various types of clouds and how light changes depending on the season and time of day.
• How to depict water in all its forms, from calm, reflective ponds and meandering rivers to whitewater cascades and ocean waves.
• A clear and simple approach to the puzzling concepts of aerial perspective and the nature of reflections.
• A primer on materials to help novice artists and newcomers get started in pastel.

For beginners up, everything you need to know. Includes 28 teaching videos to view online. This combined book and video-guide to drawing manga will allow artists of ANY ability to master this hugely popular drawing style. The 256 page book is packed with step-by-step tutorials on every aspect of manga drawing, basing the instructions around traditional sketching and colouring techniques, and including digital tools for rendering and finishing artwork. The author is highly accomplished professional artist Sonia Leong, who is also creating 28 two-minute video demonstrations designed to link specifically to the content of this book. These video clips are hosted online, and accessed from the book's pages using QR codes (or URLs), making this one of the most user-friendly manga tutor books on the market. Readers will learn how to build up characters from basic shapes and measurements, get the anatomy and poses absolutely right, add crucial design elements to enhance drawings and stories, render artwork in different styles and mediums (including digital), and even start to create comic pages and sequences- for publication in print or online.

The blank page can be daunting, but 10 Step Drawing: Flowers offers an easy jumping-off point for any doodler to be creative. Featuring illustrated tutorials for drawing 75 irresistible flowers - from exotic wildflowers, to aquatic flora, garden posies and beautiful succulents - every image is fun and easy to replicate in ten simple steps using just a pen and paper. Handy prompts help the reader without giving them dry, prescriptive instructions, and every flower has its own distinctive character. 10 Step Drawing: Flowers is sure to encourage even the most nervous amateur artist to dust off their pen and doodle. Other titles in the series: 10 Step Drawing: Animals.