Sue Clyne is emerging as the UK's leading fantasy artist. She grew up in the Norfolk countryside of rolling hills and woodlands. Her school books were littered with doodles and sketches in margins and on pages. She remains an intuitive artist. She has taken her lead from a varied selection of great artists including Josephine Wall, the late Susan Seddon Boulet and Salavador Dali.

Award-winning illustrator Gabriel Campanario first introduced his approach to drawing in "The Art of Urban Sketching," a showcase of more than 500 sketches and drawing tips shared by more than 100 urban sketchers around the world. Now, he drills down into specific challenges of making sketches on location, rain or shine, quickly or slowly, and the most suitable techniques for every situation, in "The Urban Sketching Handbook" series.

It's easy to overlook that ample variety of characters that walk the streets everyday. From neighbors, dog walkers and shoppers to dancers and joggers, the people that move through the cities and towns are fascinating subjects to study and sketch. In "The Urban Sketching Handbook: People and Motion" Gabriel lays out keys to help make the experience of drawing humans and movements fun and rewarding. Using composition, depth, scale, contrast, line and creativity, sketching out citizens and the way they move has never been more inspirational and entertaining. This guide will help you to develop your own creative approach, no matter what your skill level may be today. As much as "The Urban Sketching Handbook: People and Motion" may inspire you to draw more individuals, it can also help to increase your appreciation of the folks around you. Drawing our postal workers, shopkeeps and neighbors, is a great way to show your appreciation and creativity.

As negentienjarige ryloper in Spanje beland Frank Westerman toevallig in die dorpie Banyoles, waar ’n opgestopte “Kalahari-Boesman”, slegs bekend as El Negro, uitgestal word. Sy indrukke bly hom by – en wanneer hy dekades later weer van El Negro lees, die keer in ’n Franse koerant, is dit die begin van ’n ondersoeksreis wat belangrike vrae oor rasopvattings en die Westerse beskawing na vore bring. Wie was hierdie naamlose man? Wat se sy opgestopte “museumteenwoordigheid” oor Europese denke oor slawerny, rassisme en kolonialisme – en bied hy slegs ’n spieel op ’n vergange tyd, of ook op die hede?

"Mary Magdalene, Iconographic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque" examines the iconographic inventions in Magdalene imagery and the contextual factors that shaped her representation in visual art from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Unique to other saints in the medieval lexicon, images of Mary Magdalene were altered over time to satisfy the changing needs of her patrons as well as her audience. By shedding light on the relationship between the Magdalene and her patrons, both corporate and private, as well as the religious institutions and regions where her imagery is found, this anthology reveals the flexibility of the Magdalene s character in art and, in essence, the reinvention of her iconography from one generation to the next.

Ut pictura amor: The Reflexive Imagery of Love in Artistic Theory and Practice, 1500-1700 examines the related themes of lovemaking and image-making in the visual arts of Europe, China, Japan, and Persia. The term 'reflexive' is here used to refer to images that invite reflection not only on their form, function, and meaning, but also on their genesis and mode of production. Early modern artists often fashioned reflexive images and effigies of this kind, that appraise love by exploring the lineaments of the pictorial or sculptural image, and complementarily, appraise the pictorial or sculptural image by exploring the nature of love. Hence the book's epigraph-ut pictura amor-'as is a picture, so is love'.

Prometheus was punished by the supreme god Zeus for giving to mankind the Olympic fire with which they learned to think and feel. He was chained to a cliff in the Caucasus, where, to make matters worse, he was visited daily by an eagle who ate part of his liver. At night, however, his liver grew back. We now know that the liver can regenerate, but were the ancient Greeks aware of this quality? The myth of Prometheus has been a source of inspiration for many visual artists over the centuries. In this book, the medical history of the liver is traced through the ages through an examination of historical texts on the organ's functions and properties, parallel to the art movements in which the fascinating iconography of Prometheus is reviewed. The book offers a surprising interplay of art and medicine, placing emphasis on the unique morphology of the liver.

Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices critically examines a longstanding colonial fascination with the black female body as an object of sexual desire, envy, and anxiety. Since the 2002 repatriation of the remains of Sara Baartman to post-apartheid South Africa, the interest in the figure of Black Venus has skyrocketed, making her a key symbol for the restoration of the racialized female body in feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial terms. Edited by Jorunn Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, and Zeljka Svrljuga, this volume considers Black Venus as a product of art established and potentially refigured through aesthetic practices, following her travels through different periods, geographies and art forms from Baudelaire to Kara Walker, and from the Caribbean to Scandinavia. Contributors: Kjersti Aarstein, Carmen Birkle, Jorunn Svensen Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, Ulla Angkjaer Jorgensen, Ljubica Matek, Margery Vibe Skagen, Camilla Erichsen Skalle, Zeljka Svrljuga.

Evil Children in Religion, Literature and Art explores the genesis, development, and religious significance of a literary and iconographic motif, involving a gang of urchins, usually male, who mock or assault a holy or eccentric person, typically an adult. Originating in the biblical tale of Elisha's mockery ( Kings 2.23-24), this motif recurs in literature, hagiography, and art, from antiquity up to our own time, strikingly defying the conventional Judeo-Christian and Romantic image of the child as a symbol of innocence.

Bodies mangled, limbs broken, skin flayed, blood spilled: from paintings to prints to small sculptures, the art of the late Middle Ages and early modern period gave rise to disturbing scenes of violence. Many of these torture scenes recall Christ's Passion and its aftermath, but the martyrdoms of saints, stories of justice visited on the wicked, and broadsheet reports of the atrocities of war provided fertile ground for scenes of the body's desecration. Contributors to this volume interpret pain, suffering, and the desecration of the human form not simply as the passing fancies of a cadre of proto-sadists, but also as serving larger social functions within European society. Taking advantage of the frameworks established by scholars such as Samuel Edgerton, Mitchell Merback, and Elaine Scarry (to name but a few), Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 provides an intriguing set of lenses through which to view such imagery and locate it within its wider social, political, and devotional contexts. Though the art works discussed are centuries old, the topics of the essays resonate today as twenty-first-century Western society is still absorbed in thorny debates about the ethics and consequences of the use of force, coercion (including torture), and execution, and about whether it is ever fully acceptable to write social norms on the bodies of those who will not conform.

Whether your favourite medium is digital, traditional, or a mix of both, Stockholm-based Feefal will have used it to explore her unique world of anthropomorphised figures, animals in dream-like settings, and cool-girl magic. Her spooky-cute style has been a constant throughout her career, amassing 870K dedicated Instagram followers who not only adore her art, but are always keen to know the stories and inspiration behind it. Now for the first time, Feefal has written a beautifully produced book, her work printed on high-quality paper, providing the chance to not only show what she does, but also how. 3dtotal Publishing excels at helping artists to communicate both the motivations behind their unique creativity, and the technical tips and tricks they use. Feefal shares the early influences that put her on the path to becoming the professional character designer she is today, including those of her Swedish-Japanese upbringing. In doing so, the ideas behind paintings such as Lamp Shade Lady, Understanding the Hahahaki Disease (a fictional ailment caused by unrequited love) and Momento Mori are explained. With galleries of curated classics intertwined with step-by-step tutorials and fascinating insights into her creative process, Feefal's work is as intriguing as it is spellbinding.

A regiment of women warriors strides across the battlefield of German culture - on the stage, in the opera house, on the page, and in paintings and prints. These warriors are re-imaginings by men of figures such as the Amazons, the Valkyries, and the biblical killer Judith. They are transgressive and therefore frightening figures who leave their proper female sphere and have to be made safe by being killed, deflowered, or both. This has produced some compelling works of Western culture - Cranach's and Klimt's paintings of Judith, Schiller's Joan of Arc, Hebbel's Judith, Wagner's Brunnhilde, Fritz Lang's Brunhild. Nowadays, representations of the woman warrior are used as a way of thinking about the woman terrorist. Women writers only engage with these imaginings at the end of the 19th century, but from the late 18th century on they begin to imagine fictional cross-dressers going to war in a realistic setting and thus think the unthinkable. What are the roots of these imaginings? And how are they related to Freud's ideas about women's sexuality?

Figure to Ground publishes a collection of studies from the nodel made between 2010 and 2014. These include works in pencil and watercolour, and oil on canvas of positions taken between five and fifteen minutes. They come to represent a conversation between artist and sitter, confirming the easy and natural grace of the human figure in focus.

Reconciling Art and Mothering contributes a chorus of new voices to the burgeoning body of scholarship on art and the maternal and, for the first time, focuses exclusively on maternal representations and experiences within visual art throughout the world. This innovative essay collection joins the voices of practicing artists with those of art historians, acknowledging the fluidity of those categories. The twenty-five essays of Reconciling Art and Mothering are grouped into two sections, the first written by art historians and the second by artists. Art historians reflect on the work of artists addressing motherhood-including Marguerite Gerard, Chana Orloff, and Renee Cox-from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Contributions by contemporary artist-mothers, such as Gail Rebhan, Denise Ferris, and Myrel Chernick, point to the influence of past generations of artist-mothers, to the inspiration found in the work of maternally minded literary and cultural theorists, and to attempts to broaden definitions of maternity. Working against a hegemonic construction of motherhood, the contributors discuss complex and diverse feminist mothering experiences, from maternal ambivalence to queer mothering to quests for self-fulfillment. The essays address mothering experiences around the globe, with contributors hailing from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.