We all want to see Snow White with tattoos, right? Well, at least photographer Robert Alvarado does. In his newest collection of high-octane pin-up images, Alvarado shows how his own style of shooting and editing, which has been called cartoonish, illustrated, and painted marries perfectly with cosplay. In more than 150 vibrant, color images, see Alvarado's take on this pop culture phenomenon as he captures models "cosing" as characters from Buck Rogers, Deadpool, Star Wars, your favorite D.C. and Marvel franchises, and much more. From fantasy to sci-fi and Disney to video games, the models embody and costume many beloved characters while striking traditional and contemporary pin-up poses. Complete with some behind-the-scenes shots and details on Alvarado's approach to working with the models, this is the perfect collection of images for fans and students of pop culture and pin-up photography.

Rich in symbolism and metaphor, and blessed with its own varied and dramatic palette, the garden has proved to be an extremely fertile source of artistic inspiration. In The Garden in Art, acclaimed art historian Debra N. Mancoff reveals the many different ways in which artists from all periods of history - from ancient Egypt to the present day - have employed the motif of the garden. Featuring more than 200 illustrations of both renowned and lesser-known works, the book approaches its subject thematically, exploring such topics as working gardens, the garden through the seasons and artists' gardens. Complete with a detailed timeline and a suggested list of gardens to visit, The Garden in Art is an absorbing and highly rewarding examination of the meaning and significance of the depiction of the garden.

"Swiss explorer and photographer Stefan Forster admits that he is no stranger to dodging alligators and hiking for weeks in pursuit of the perfect photo. And an impressive new photobook shows that his efforts pay off handsomely." - Sarah Holt, Mail Online "This tome is a potential classic in the making and a masterclass in how straightforward landscape imagery should be done." - Amateur Photographer "Stunning pictures...luminous images..." - Examiner "Unbelievable...just amazing..." - WGN TV Chicago Captured in vivid colour and magnificent quality, the unique moments that photographer Stefan Forster discovers in out-of-the-way places in nature take place on adventurous backcountry trips far from civilisation, with Forster lugging up to 80 pounds in camera gear and camping equipment. With enormous enthusiasm and prepared for anything, he often hikes through remote areas for weeks at a time on his search for the extraordinary. He has taken long solo kayak expeditions along Greenland's west coast, hopped from island to island in Micronesia, and slogged through the swamps of Louisiana and Texas to find the area's most beautiful cypress trees, dodging alligators all the while. The results are unique and fascinating photos. This book presents this young photographer's most beautiful experiences to date, including everything from rare rainstorms in the world's driest desert and the Northern Lights shimmering through icebergs to spectacular shots of the Rocky Mountains. Forster was one of the first photographers to use state-of-the-art quadcopter drones, giving his pictures fresh, new perspectives. Stefan Forster published some of these aerial shots for the first time in Above the World - Earth Through a Drone's Eye, released by teNeues in September 2016. The following locations are included in the book: Switzerland Iceland Greenland Antarctica Peninsula Utah Colorado South Dakota Louisiana Washington Namibia Westcoast, Scotland Uganda New Zealand Seychelles La Gomera Tasmania Philippines Australia Indonesia Text in English, French and German.

Including both narratives and visual texts by and about Latina women, Amador Gomez-Quintero and Perez Bustillo address the question of how women represent themselves. Utilizing paintings, novels, photographs, memoirs, and diaries this work examines the depiction of the female body in 20th-century creative expression. From writers such as Julia Alvarez and Christina Garcia to artists including Frida Kahlo and Ana Mendieta, it provides both a broad outline and a finely detailed exploration of how a largely overlooked community of creative women have seen, drawn, photographed, and written about their own experience.

The authors discuss women as both agent and subject of artistic representation often comparing both fictional and nonfictional versions of the same woman. Not only do they analyze Elena Poniatowska's "Dear Diego," which centers on artist Angelina Beloff, but they also analyze Beloff's own memoirs. Continuing in this style, they make further comparisons between Frida Kahlo's "Diary" and visual images of her body. Connections such as these are what make their work not merely an articulation of imagery but an explanation of ideas.

This book traces the history of the Annunciation, exploring the deep and lasting impact of the event on the Western imagination. Waller explores the Annunciation from its appearance in Luke's Gospel, to its rise to prominence in religious doctrine and popular culture, and its gradual decline in importance during the Enlightenment.

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list and robust ivory text paper. THE ARTIST. Renowned Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is well known for his richly decorative commissioned portraits and murals. The Kiss is a prime example of Klimt's 'Golden Phase', in which he began to feature especially sumptuous ornamentation on a regular basis in his paintings. The couple in this artwork represent the mystical union of spiritual and erotic love, and the connection of life and the universe. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

From millennia-old cave art to world-famous internet sensations, dogs have inspired artists to strive to capture their loyal personalities and antics for as long as they've been our furry friends. This joyous collection celebrates dogs in art, spanning eras, styles and continents, from the brushes of masters such as Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sargent, Gauguin, Klee, Picasso and more.

This book, considered a classic of Christian devotional literature, was written by young Scottish Puritan HENRY SCOUGAL (1650-1678), professor of divinity at Aberdeen University, in the form of a letter to a friend who has lost his faith. In clear, supportive, inspirational language, Scougal discusses: . religion and the natural divine life . how the Savior exemplifies divine love . the difficulties and duties of Christian life . and more. Seekers after spiritual succor continue to find soulful sustenance and encouragement in this work more than two centuries after it was first published.

It started in 1978 with an ordinary coffee shop near Kyoto. Word spread that the waitresses wore no panties under their miniskirts. Similar establishments popped up across the country. Men waited in line outside to pay three times the usual coffee price just to be served by a panty-free young woman. Within a few years, a new craze took hold: the no-panties "massage" parlor. Increasingly bizarre services followed, from fondling clients through holes in coffins to commuter-train fetishists. One particularly popular destination was a Tokyo club called "Lucky Hole" where clients stood on one side of a plywood partition, a hostess on the other. In between them was a hole big enough for a certain part of the male anatomy. Taking the Lucky Hole as his title, Nobuyoshi Araki captures Japan's sex industry in full flower, documenting in more than 800 photos the pleasure-seekers and providers of Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood before the February 1985 New Amusement Business Control and Improvement Act put a stop to many of the country's sex locales. Through mirrored walls, bed sheets, the bondage and the orgies, this is the last word on an age of bacchanalia, infused with moments of humor, precise poetry, and questioning interjections. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

One hundred years ago in Brazil the rituals of Candomble were feared as sorcery and persecuted as crime. Its cult objects were fearsome fetishes. Nowadays, they are Afro-Brazilian cultural works of art, objects of museum display and public monuments. Focusing on the particular histories of objects, images, spaces and persons who embodied it, this book portrays the historical journey from weapons of sorcery looted by the police, to hidden living stones, to public works of art attacked by religious fanatics that see them as images of the Devil, former sorcerers who have become artists, writers, and philosophers. Addressing this history as a journey of objectification and appropriation, the author offers a fresh, unconventional, and illuminating look at questions of syncretism, hybridity and cultural resistance in Brazil and in the Black Atlantic in general.

An all-new collection of paintings, portraits, and pin-ups of real life fantasy and erotic muse/model herself - Drakaina! Assembled from a year-long contest to see who could capture the quintessential qualities of the Queen best, this volume celebrates the winners! Art by Lorenzo Di Mauro, Edward Reed, Sandra Chang, Fastner & Larson, and many other highly talented followers of this fantastic femme fatale!

Learn to draw all kinds of cute cats doing all sorts of silly things through 75 step-by-step tutorials. In Kawaii Kitties, popular Instagram artist Bichi Mao (@bichi.mao) perfectly captures cats' different attitudes, while playing, sleeping, eating, stretching, exploring, being loving, wearing cute costumes, and much more! Along with the tutorials, Bichi Mao shares: An introduction to the kawaii art aesthetic Suggestions for drawing tools Tips and tricks for drawing and coloring your cats A facial expression directory Coloring pages swarming with kitties for you to decorate So, get ready to purrfect your drawing skills, as well as be inspired to create your own kitty characters or illustrate the daily activities of your favorite pet. Learn how to draw even more cute things with these other fun books in the Kawaii Doodle series: Kawaii Doodle Class, Kawaii Doodle Cuties, Mini Kawaii Doodle Class, Mini Kawaii Doodle Cuties, and Kawaii Doodle World.

How and why did a medieval female saint from the Eastern Mediterranean come to be such a powerful symbol in early modern Rome? This study provides an overview of the development of the cult of Catherine of Alexandria in Renaissance Rome, exploring in particular how a saint's cult could be variously imaged and 'reinvented' to suit different eras and patronal interests. Cynthia Stollhans traces the evolution of the saint's imagery through the lens of patrons and their interests-with special focus on the importance of Catherine's image in the fashioning of her Roman identity-to show how her imagery served the religious, political, and/or social agendas of individual patrons and religious orders.

At the turn of the fifteenth century, private devotionals became a speciality of the renowned Ghent-Bruges illuminators. Wealthy patrons who commissioned work from these artists often spared no expense in the presentation of their personal prayer books, or 'books of hours', from detailed decoration to luxurious bindings and embroidery. This enchanting illuminated manuscript was painted by the Master of the David Scenes in the Grimani Breviary (known as the David Master), one of the renowned Flemish illuminators in the sixteenth century. Every page of the manuscript is exquisitely decorated. Fine architectural interiors, gorgeous landscapes and detailed city scenes, each one depicting a narrative, form the subjects of three full-size illuminations and forty-two full-page miniatures. There are floral borders on a gold ground or historiated borders in the Flemish and Italian style on every page. It is one of the finest examples of medieval illumination in a personal prayer book and the most copiously illustrated work of the David Master to survive. The manuscript owes its name to the French Queen, Marie de Medici, widow of King Henri IV. For a time she went into exile in Brussels, where she is thought to have acquired the manuscript before moving again to Cologne. An inscription in English states that she left the book of hours in this city, and it is here that an English manuscript collector, Francis Douce, may have acquired the book and eventually donated it to the Bodleian Library. Together with a scholarly introduction that gives an overview of Flemish illumination and examines each of the illustrations in detail, this full-colour facsimile limited edition, bound in linen with a leather quarter binding and beautifully presented in a slipcase, faithfully reproduces all 176 leaves of the original manuscript.

Despite the large number of monumental Last Supper frescoes which adorn refectories in Quattrocento Florence, until now no monograph has appeared in English on the Florentine Last Supper frescoes, nor has any study examined the perceptions of the original viewers. This study examines the rarely considered effect of gender on the profoundly contextualized perceptions of the male and female religious who viewed the Florentine Last Supper images in surprisingly different physical and cultural refectory environments. In addition to offering detailed visual analyses, the author draws on a broad spectrum of published and unpublished primary materials, including monastic rules, devotional tracts and reading materials, the constitutions and ordinazioni for individual houses, inventories from male and female communities and the Convent Suppression documents of the Archivio di Stato in Florence. By examining the original viewers' attitudes to images, their educational status, acculturated pieties, affective responses, levels of community, degrees of reclusion, and even the types of food eaten in the refectories, Hiller argues that the perceptions of these viewers of the Last Supper frescoes were intrinsically gendered.