Breathe Life into Your Animal Drawings Wildlife artist Doug Lindstrand has spent 30+ years observing animals in nature and capturing them on paper. In this book, he distills his expertise into key lessons for drawing any animal in a charming, realistic style. Inside, a whole herd of step-by-step exercises and demonstrations (43, to be exact!) cover a broad range of subjects and challenges, including how to draw: Short, long and patterned fur Mouths, eyes, ears and horns Various poses, including seated, standing and moving A diversity of animals, domestic and wild--from housecats to big cats, from tiny cottontails to massive African elephants. Nothing intimidating here! Starting with easy sketches, you'll learn to gradually refine basic shapes into lifelike dogs, wolves, deer, sheep, horses, bears, giraffes, owls, eagles, geese and other magnificent creatures. With this classic and time-tested approach, you'll be able to draw not only the animals illustrated on these pages, but any animal that touches your artistic soul.

This comprehensive guide to painting landscapes in watercolour features the expert tuition of six renowned watercolour artists. It covers all aspects of painting, from materials and techniques through to planning a painting, sketching and perspective. Learn the techniques of wet into wet, spattering, dry brushing, lifting out and using salt to create texture and interest, and follow the step-by-step demonstrations to create realistic water, skies, reflections and buildings, as well as mood and atmosphere. With nine beautiful projects to try, and numerous examples of the authors' work to inspire you, this is the ideal introduction to landscape painting for artists of all abilities. This book includes material previously published in the highly successful Step-by-Step Leisure Arts series and the Watercolour Tips and Techniques series.

The follow-up to the internationally bestselling sensation The Lost Words, The Lost Spells is a beautiful collection of poems and illustrations that evokes the magic of the everyday natural world.

Since its publication in 2017, The Lost Words has enchanted readers with its poetry and illustrations of the natural world. Now, The Lost Spells, a book kindred in spirit and tone, continues to re-wild the lives of children and adults. The Lost Spells evokes the wonder of everyday nature, conjuring up red foxes, birch trees, jackdaws, and more in poems and illustrations that flow between the pages and into readers' minds. Robert Macfarlane's spell-poems and Jackie Morris's watercolour illustrations are musical and magical: these are summoning spells, words of recollection, charms of protection.

To read The Lost Spells is to see anew the natural world within our grasp and to be reminded of what happens when we allow it to slip away.

In the era of the Anthropocene, artists and scientists are facing a new paradigm in their attempts to represent nature. Seven chapters, which focus on art from 1780 to the present that engages with Nordic landscapes, argue that a number of artists in this period work in the intersection between art, science, and media technologies to examine the human impact on these landscapes and question the blurred boundaries between nature and the human. Canadian artists such as Lawren Harris and Geronimo Inutiq are considered alongside artists from Scandinavia and Iceland such as J.C. Dahl, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Toril Johannessen, and Bjoerk.

This fantastic book showcases the prestigious Embroiderers' Guild's huge collection of embroidered birds through the ages. Featuring photographs taken especially for the book, items are shown in full along with detailed images that show off the stunning birds at their best.

A garden is more than the sum of its parts--a garden can be anything one wants it to be. What's important is that it have a heart. Through ethereal illustrations, textile designer and artist Virginia Johnson takes the reader on her own garden journey, from blank slate to dreamscape. Over the years, she has transformed a small, narrow city lot into a garden that is personal, carefree, wild, and welcoming. It all began with a fence to allow her children to play freely but safely, and over the years has turned into a city-dweller's "secret garden." Hornbeams, with their elegant shape, are the heroes of her garden, and the overall palette reflects an artist's lens--peonies, hollyhocks, roses, and hydrangeas abound. Johnson explains her process with ease and clarity, bringing her ideas to life through words and illustrations so that readers can be encouraged and empowered to start their own garden journeys. The book is organized into clear chapters--Trees & Shrubs; Vines; Flowers; Seasons; Edibles; and more.

Winner, Canadian Museums Association's Outstanding Achievement in Research Award and IPPY Awards Silver Medal -- Fine Art CategoryA Toronto Star Holiday Gift Guide SelectionA Like Vision is a lavish celebration of the legacy of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, Canada's canonical landscape painters. The Group's depiction of the rugged beauty of the Canadian landscape -- from the coastal mountains of British Columbia to the north shore of Lake Superior, the villages of rural Quebec, and the rocky, windswept coves of Newfoundland -- charged Canadians to experience their country in a bold new light and changed the face of Canadian art forever. Through their vigorous and expressive painterly style and vibrant colours, the Group of Seven significantly contributed to Canada's sense of autonomy and identity as a modern state in the aftermath of the First World War. Featuring three hundred full-colour images, A Like Vision includes a lead essay by Ian A. C. Dejardin, Executive Director of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and contributions by a host of artists, curators, and writers. Among them are Indigenous art historian and curator Gerald McMaster, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, novelists David Macfarlane and Jane Urquhart, painters John Hartman and Robert Houle, and Inuk writer Tarralik Duffy. One hundred years on from the Group's first exhibition in 1920, A Like Vision is both a chance to review the Group's legacy and a tribute to these giants of Canadian art and culture.

'Think of this atlas as the beginning of a journey and a kind of island guidebook, a rough guide to far-flung places, a Baedeker of make-believe, and a new page waiting to be filled. The cycle of Crusoes continues' Huw Lewis-Jones A new atlas of imaginary islands conjured up by an international gathering of illustrators, including work by Coralie Bickford-Smith, Bill Bragg, Marion Deuchars, Chris Riddell, Maisie Paradise Shearring, Herve Tullet, Ausra Kiudulaite and more. Islomania is a recognized affliction. But what is it about islands that is so alluring, and why do so many people find these self-contained worlds completely irresistible? Utopia and Atlantis were islands, and islands have captured the imaginations of writers and artists for centuries. Venetian sailors were the first to make collections of them by drawing maps of those they visited in their isolari - literally the 'island books'. Then in 1719 Daniel Defoe published his tale of a castaway on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe, one of the first great novels in the history of literature and an instant bestseller. Defoe's tale combined the real and the imagined and transformed them into a compelling creative landscape, establishing a whole literary genre and unleashing the power of an island for storytelling. To celebrate the tercentenary of Robinson Crusoe's publication, a truly international range of leading illustrators imagine they too have been washed up on their own remote island. In a specially created map they visualize what it looks like, what it's called and what can be found on its mythical shores. In a panoply of astonishingly creative and often surprising responses, we are invited to explore a curious and fabulous archipelago of islands of invention that will beguile illustrators, cartographers and dreamers alike.

Nature and Illusion is the first extended treatment of the portrayal of nature in Byzantine art and literature. In this richly illustrated study, Henry Maguire shows how the Byzantines embraced terrestrial creation in the decoration of their churches during the fifth to seventh centuries but then adopted a much more cautious attitude toward the depiction of animals and plants in the middle ages, after the iconoclastic dispute of the eighth and ninth centuries. In the medieval period, the art of Byzantine churches became more anthropocentric and less accepting of natural images. The danger that the latter might be put to idolatrous use created a constant state of tension between worldliness, represented by nature, and otherworldliness, represented by the portrait icons of the saints. The book discusses the role of iconoclasm in affecting this fundamental change in Byzantine art, as both sides in the controversy accused the other of "worshipping the creature rather than the Creator." An important theme is the asymmetrical relationship between Byzantine art and literature with respect to the portrayal of nature. A series of vivid texts described seasons, landscapes, gardens, and animals, but these were more sparingly illustrated in medieval art. Maguire concludes by discussing the abstraction of nature in the form of marble floors and revetments and with a consideration of the role of architectural backgrounds in medieval Byzantine art. Throughout Nature and Illusion, medieval Byzantine art is compared with that of Western Europe, where different conceptions of religious imagery allowed a closer engagement with nature.

Sophie Corrigan evokes everyone's inner zoologist in this charmingly illustrated and wittily worded menagerie. Each critter featured in this fun book is tagged with totally fictitious yet comically accurate anatomical labels, from a tree frog's "clingy jazz hands" and a raccoon's "sneaky bandito mask" to a velociraptor's "disembowly prowlies" and many more. Rife with animal puns, eye-catching bonus art, interesting animal facts, and laugh-out-loud labels that beg to be shared, Animal Anatomy will bring smiles to animal lovers of all ages.

Fill your home with original, professional art - and learn to paint at the same time. This innovative new series is a poster book, an art pad and a step-by-step painting book all rolled into one! Each of the five A3 posters are ready to pull out, frame and display. In addition, you can enjoy the calming pursuit of painting each of the pictures yourself using the pre-printed outlines - so no drawing required. The large, landscape format of the book allows each stage of painting to be clearly and comprehensively explained with an innovative annotation approach. Simply pull out the simple, stage-by-stage tutorial pages and pin them to your easel, then paint directly onto the watercolour outline for fantastic results. In this title, Country Scenes, learn to paint a range of inspiring landscapes: journey to a tranquil New Forest stream, a rolling Tuscan hillside and a snowy mountain river, and enjoy 5 masterclasses in landscape painting.

Bring the magic of the rainforest to your doorstep by drawing this collection of colourful animals and birds. Prolific author and artist Susie Hodge teaches you to transform simple shapes into mysterious jaguars, shy butterflies or endangered orangutans in easy-to-follow stages. Choose from a sleepy sloth, a noisy toucan and much more. There are 28 different animals to create, in a variety of poses and styles. Each project starts with a few basic outlines and progresses into a finished tonal drawing, and a final coloured version shows you how to develop your drawing even further. Perfect for beginners, as well as budding artists, you'll be amazed how easily you too can draw rainforest animals with this inspiring guide.

Few books have had a greater impact than A Sand County Almanac, which many credit with launching a revolution in land management. Written as a series of sketches based principally upon the flora and fauna in a rural part of Wisconsin, the book, originally published by Oxford in 1949, gathers informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year period as he traveled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; a final section addresses the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. Beloved for its description and evocation of the natural world, Leopold's book, which has sold well over 2 million copies, remains a foundational text in environmental science and a national treasure.

On December 15, 1868, Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794-1868), Professor of Botany at the University of Munich and director of the Royal Botanic Garden, was carried to his grave in a coffin covered with fresh palm leaves. These were a reference to his groundbreaking Historia naturalis palmarum: opus tripartitum (Natural History of Palms: a work in three volumes), published between 1823 and 1853. At the time, this encyclopedic treasury contained the sum of human knowledge on the topic, and included 240 exquisite chromolithographic illustrations, including landscape views of palm habitats and botanical dissections. This epic folio was based on von Martius's expedition to Brazil and Peru with zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix, sponsored by King Maximilian I of Bavaria, to investigate natural history and native tribes. From 1817 to 1820 the pair traveled over 2,250 km (1,400 miles) throughout the Amazon basin, the most species-rich palm region in the world, collecting and sketching specimens. On their return both men were awarded knighthoods and lifetime pensions. In his epic work, von Martius outlined the modern classification of palm, produced the first maps of palm biogeography, described all the palms of Brazil, and collated the sum of all known genera of the palm family. Apart from his own collection of specimens and notes, von Martius also wrote about the findings of others. Von Martius's folio is unusual in its inclusion of cross-sectioned diagrams, conveying the architecture of these mighty trees, which central Europeans would have found hard to imagine accurately. Equally remarkable are the color landscapes showing various palms-often standing alone-which have a simple and elegant beauty. This famous work is an unrivaled landmark in botanic illustration and taxonomy.

Nothing makes a fantasy fan's imagination catch fire like the dragon, one of the most enduringly popular beasts of legend. Now, with DragonArt, readers can learn how to bring these mythical creatures to life, with: More than 30 lessons broken down into simple colour-coded steps, from basic shapes, to details including claws and wings, to spectacular finished dragons and beasts Full-coloured illustrations to captivate and inspire readers A playful, engaging text that includes "historical facts about dragons" Additional step-by-step demonstrations covering other fantasy creatures, such as wyverns, basilisks and gargoyles Extra hints, tips & tricks provided by DragonArt's dragon mascot, Dolosus With the tips and suggestions in DragonArt, fantasy lovers can let their imaginations soar.

A humorous and informative book, debunking a range of commonly held myths about animals. Camels store water in their humps and magpies love to steal shiny objects. Or do they? A must-read in the Everything you Know series, this book debunks a range of old-cod stories about animals in author Matt Brown's inimitable humorous and fascinating style. Covering everything from the myth that lemmings throw themselves off cliffs in suicide (they don't, but on occasion some just fall off) to the one about bats being blind (they're not, and they can see but use the more sophisticated echolocation for certain hunting). From head in the sand ostriches to cats landing on their feet, a wealth of information on our beloved pets to creepy crawlies and wild giants, this book will set the marvel of the animal word straight. Plus, there are special features on the odd diets of animals and how wrongly they are portrayed in the movies. All the old stories and myths about animals we've had since childhood are gleefully debunked in a hugely entertaining book.

A survey of 21 contemporary artists who specialise in painting gardens. The artists come from the United Kingdom as well as Europe and the United States. They work in a wide range of media including watercolour, acrylics, oils and tempera. For each artist, there is a brief biographical thumbnail sketch, reproductions of a variety of their work, and comments from the artists on their painting styles and working practices. The result is a intriguing look at this fascinating subject. A beautiful book with a foreword by Sir Roy Strong.

In 1975, David Shepherd wrote The Man Who Loves Giants - an autobiography. Even though he was only forty-four, he had already achieved more than most could have in three lifetimes. In the intervening years, until his death in 2017, he painted a huge variety of subjects; founded the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation; renovated and restored everything from steam engines to dolls' houses; and appeared on both radio and television. 'Being the extrovert I am,' he once said, 'I like things large and exciting ... especially elephants ...' However, this enthusiasm wasn't restricted to animals; it extended to his love and ownership of several full-sized steam engines, including locomotive number 92203, otherwise known as Black Prince. David's friends ranged from showbiz celebrities to well-known sportsmen and women; and British and European royalty to internationally influential politicians and presidents. He was awarded the Order of the Golden Ark by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands for his services to conservation in Zambia, and the Order of Distinguished Service, First Class, by President Kaunda. Her Majesty The Queen presented David with the OBE and CBE. David's first gallery successes were not of the African wildlife for which he is now best known. London scenes, planes, boats and trains have long featured in his portfolio - as do English landscapes and bygone rural life. Since David's autobiography, no book has dealt so comprehensively with his life, painting, and conservation work as this biography by J. C. Jeremy Hobson, professional author and David's youngest son-in-law. With access to family archives and photographs, private diaries and reminiscences, this is a unique portrait of a remarkable man.

An illustrated, comprehensive guide to botanical painting written by the Society of Botanical Artists. In this new book the Society of Botanical Artists provides a comprehensive guide to the different styles and methods of botanical painting, harvesting the talent of both Members and Distance Learning Diploma Course students around the world, past and present. Botanical Painting features techniques and materials for all levels and demonstrates how these skills can be used to develop your own expertise. There are chapters on drawing with graphite and metal point, coloured pencil, body and watercolour in plant portraiture and illustration as well as 'The Mixed Bunch'. The inclusion of the historic methods used for egg tempera and metal point, as well as the technique required for working on vellum, makes this a valuable source of advice on subjects not readily available elsewhere. An inspirational gallery of paintings at the end of the book provides a guided walk around an SBA exhibition. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout, with comprehensive critiques on the artworks and step-by-step demonstrations. It will be an invaluable and inspirational addition to the library of the more experienced botanical painter.