This complete guide to the crisp, precise finish of botanical painting marries traditional technique with contemporary style and includes sections on colour, drawing, continuous tone, composition and dissection. Michael Lakin makes botanical art approachable with simple exercises and a variety of step-by-step instructional approaches, making this a fantastic guide for aspirational beginners.

Choreographies of the Living explores the implications of shifting from viewing art as an exclusively human undertaking to recognizing it as an activity that all living creatures enact. Carrie Rohman reveals the aesthetic impulse itself to be profoundly trans-species, and in doing so she revises our received wisdom about the value and functions of artistic capacities. Countering the long history of aesthetic theory in the West-beginning with Plato and Aristotle, and moving up through the recent claims of "neuroaesthetics"-Rohman challenges the likening of aesthetic experience to an exclusively human form of judgment. Turning toward the animal in new frameworks for understanding aesthetic impulses, Rohman emphasizes a deep coincidence of humans' and animals' elaborations of fundamental life forces. Examining a range of literary, visual, dance, and performance works and processes by modernist and contemporary figures such as Isadora Duncan, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Merce Cunningham, Rohman reconceives the aesthetic itself not as a distinction separating humans from other animals, but rather as a framework connecting embodied beings. Her view challenges our species to acknowledge the shared status of art-making, one of our most hallowed and formerly exceptional activities.

This book highlights a century of landscape art inspired by the Mount Assiniboine area of the Canadian Rockies from 1899 to 2006. The book includes a preface by Robert Sandford and an introduction discussing the history of exploration of the region, early ascents of Mount Assiniboine, the development of tourism, and the significant art this majestic peak has inspired. Illustrations in the introduction include four black-and-white archival photos, along with five colour reproductions of Mary Vaux Walcott's stunning watercolours of wildflowers sketched in the area. The main text presents 42 colour plates illustrating a wide variety of styles and media from 23 artists including A P Coleman, Carl Rungius, James Simpson, Belmore Browne, Barbara and A C Leighton, Catharine and Peter Whyte, W J Phillips and A Y Jackson.Of these, only seven have been previously published. The colour plates are organised into three sections: approaching Assiniboine from the northwest; east of Assiniboine; and Mount Assiniboine itself. Each section is introduced with a black-and-white archival photograph and a quotation. The book concludes with a list of artists, endnotes, a full bibliography and an index.

This is a fascinating volume that uses illustrated manuscripts to gain a unique insight into the gardens of the Renaissance. Whether part of a grand villa or an extension of a common kitchen, gardens in the Renaissance were planted and treasured in all reaches of society. Illuminated manuscripts of the period offer a glimpse into how people at the time pictured, used, and enjoyed these idyllic green spaces. Drawn from a wide range of works in the Getty Museum's permanent collection, this gorgeously illustrated volume explores gardens on many levels, from the literary Garden of Love and the biblical Garden of Eden to courtly gardens of the nobility, and reports on the many activities - both reputable and scandalous - that took place there.

Elegant and beautiful, rich in history and supremely useful, birches have played an extraordinary yet largely unrecognized part in shaping both our natural environment and the material culture and beliefs of millions of people around the world. For thousands of years they have given people of the northern forests and beyond raw materials in the form of leaves, twigs, branches and bark, as well as wood and sap, not simply to survive but to flourish and express their identity in practical and spiritual ways. Tough, waterproof and flexible, birch bark has been used for everything from basketry and clothing to housing and transport, musical instruments and medicines, as well as a means to communicate and record sacred beliefs: some of our most ancient Buddhist texts and other historic documents are written on birch bark. Birches have not only shaped regional cultures - creating, for example, the Native American wigwam and the birch bark canoe - but continue to supply raw materials of global economic importance today. Birch explores the multiple uses of these versatile trees as well as the ancient beliefs and folklore with which they are associated. Richly illustrated, this book presents a fascinating overview of their cultural and ecological significance, from botany to literature and art, as Anna Lewington looks both at the history of birches and what the future may hold in store for them.

"Yendegaia National Park" offers a visually spectacular tour of one of Earth's most remote and scenic national parks. In Chilean Patagonia on the grand island of Tierra del Fuego, the new park -- designated in 2014 -- was prompted by a donation of private land to the Chilean park system. When combined with adjacent federal land, the new protected area covers some 372,000 acres, and forms a habitat linkage between existing national parks in Chile and Argentina. Thus the new Yendegaia National Park has helped establish one of the planet's most significant trans-boundary protected areas, or "peace parks." During expeditions to Yendegaia in various seasons, renowned nature photographer Antonio Vizcaino captured the harsh beauty of a remote land at the end of the world where glacier-carved peaks, untamed rivers, windblown steppe, and Earth's southernmost forests combine to create a unique and stunningly beautiful landscape. For both armchair adventurers who dream of Patagonia and intrepid travelers planning a trip to Chile's national parks, "Yendegaia National Park" is a must-have.