Andrew Forkner's book provides you with all you need to paint a range of birds in acrylics; taking in birds of prey, songbirds and waterbirds from all over the world. It contains information on the materials and preparation you will need to capture the delicacy and majesty of the subjects. * Twenty-six striking and characterful bird species * Clear and easy-to-follow step by step projects * Includes guidance on composition, reference and important bird features

This book is a celebration of trees, with beautiful botanical art at its centrepiece, accompanied by an entertaining and informative text. The paintings by Japanese artist Masumi Yamanaka illustrate the oldest and finest trees growing at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, showing the flowers and foliage and sometimes fruit at different stages throughout the year.

Artistic duo Mothmeister have created a place they call "Wounderland". It is a land in which grotesque creatures, in fascinating yet disturbing masks, stare out from barren wastelands, usually accompanied by mounted and stuffed animals. Unconventional and enchanting, the fairytale world of Mothmeister is at once reminiscent of a bygone age, while subtly criticising today's ever-present 'selfie' culture, and the beauty standards imposed by the media. Superlative and unique, the works of Mothmeister are celebrated and revered in this stunning book.

Over the last two summers, Pigozzi has have been taking photographs of his young and very playful dogs. In 2016, he received from Hungary two Vizsla, that he called Charles and Saatchi, and he was immediately amazed by how crazy their playing was, so he started taking pictures of them that can sometimes look violent, but he can assure you this is all play. In 2017, another puppy arrived, who is also called Saatchi. She is a Rhodesian Ridgeback and she too played with Charles and Saatchi. He mainly took the pictures in black and white as it made them more intense and a bit more dramatic. This book, Charles and Saatchi. The Dogs , contains some of the best pictures Jean Pigozzi took of his dogs.

Painted riverscapes such as Claude Monet's impressions of the Seine, Isaak Levitan's Volga views, or Thomas Cole's Hudson scenery became iconic not least because they embodied nationalist ideas about place and about culture. At a time when nationalism was taking root across Europe and the United States, the riverscape played an important role in transforming the abstract idea of the nation into a potent visual image. It not only offered a picture of the nation's physical character, but through aspects such as style, the figures portrayed, and the nature of the implied spectator, it presented a cultural ideal. In this highly original book, Tricia Cusak explores significance of painted riverscapes to the creation of national identities in nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe and America. Focusing on five rivers, the Hudson, the Volga, the Seine, the Thames, and the Shannon, the author outlines the history of the development of national landscapes, elaborating on the distinctive nature of riverscapes. Drawing on the symbolic potential of rivers to represent life and time, the riverscape provided a metaphor for the mythic stream of national history flowing unimpeded out of the past and into the future.

Learn to create precious watercolor paintings that you can paint and frame in just one day. Paint and Frame: Botanical Painting features 20 charming modern watercolor projects including florals, nature scenes, and more. With step-by-step instructions and watercolor paper included, you can try your hand at these "mini" projects, and then you can instantly display your painting in one of the enclosed frames. Add patterns or colors to your frame, then simply fold it to an upright position, and your brand new watercolor painting can be displayed inside it. Stop storing your art projects in a drawer while you wait to get frames. These handcrafted frames are ideal for displaying artwork around the house, at your desk, or to mail as a lovely handmade gift. Paint and Frame: Botanical Painting comes with an instruction book, 20 step-by-step watercolor projects to try, an assortment of watercolor paper, and 5 fantastic frames to decorate and personalize yourself. This is the perfect gift for the beginner artist looking to display their work in an elegant way without paying for expensive frames.

Dedicated to an articulation of the earth from broadly ecological perspectives, eco art is a vibrant subset of contemporary art that addresses the widespread public concern with rapid climate change and related environmental issues. In Landscape into Eco Art, Mark Cheetham systematically examines connections and divergences between contemporary eco art, land art of the 1960s and 1970s, and the historical genre of landscape painting. Through eight thematic case studies that illuminate what eco art means in practice, reception, and history, Cheetham places the form in a longer and broader art-historical context. He considers a wide range of media--from painting, sculpture, and photography to artists' films, video, sound work, animation, and installation--and analyzes the work of internationally prominent artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Nancy Holt, Mark Dion, and Robert Smithson. In doing so, Cheetham reveals eco art to be a dynamic extension of a long tradition of landscape depiction in the West that boldly enters into today's debates on climate science, government policy, and our collective and individual responsibility to the planet. An ambitious intervention into eco-criticism and the environmental humanities, this volume provides original ways to understand the issues and practices of eco art in the Anthropocene. Art historians, humanities scholars, and lay readers interested in contemporary art and the environment will find Cheetham's work valuable and invigorating.

Marianne North was a remarkable Victorian traveller and painter, who traversed the globe recording the world's flora with her paintbrush and writing her experiences in her journal. In 1879 she offered her painting collection numbering over 800 to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and at her own expense built a gallery to house them. Marianne stayed closely involved with the project, painting beautiful decorative motifs on the interior door panels and surrounds. For the first time, this unique and stunning book brings together all of Marianne North's Kew collection. The paintings are arranged geographically as they appear in the Gallery, and Marianne's original titles are included alongside each painting. With an introduction by Christopher Mills, former Head of Kew's Library, Art and Archives. This is a beautiful gift souvenir in celebration of a stunning body of work.

At the end of the nineteenth century, American artists demonstrated a preference for gardens as artistic motifs as well as a growing appreciation of the art of gardening itself. The range of color and the variation in form and silhouette made the garden a compelling subject for a large number of painters inclined toward the Impressionist style. Early twentieth-century America witnessed a mania for the garden, and the interest in the art of gardening dominated many aspects of domestic life. Publications and articles offered gardening advice for Americans, while also asserting that the art of gardening paralleled the art of painting.
The exhibition catalog "The American Impressionists in the Garden" explores the theme of the garden in American art and society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. May Brawley Hill's essay discusses a range of themes, including the Impressionist fascination for gardens, the history of garden design, comparisons between European and American garden paintings, images of women, and the art colony movement, as well as providing detailed readings of the specific gardens painted and cultivated by these artists.
Besides the forty-four color plates depicting European and American gardens by American artists, the catalog includes some historic photographs of artists in garden settings. These allow the reader to examine the relationship between the garden as photographed and the garden as painted. The catalog looks at garden paintings from Holland, France, Italy, and England and from different regions in the United States, including the Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and West Coast. Garden sculpture was an essential element of garden design, and the catalog also features images of a number of small-scale bronzes and other statuary for garden environments.
This book has been developed to accompany a 2010 exhibition at Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art.

Annette Bonnier traveled throughout India over a 3 year period photographing the lives of domesticated and wild elephants. These photographs are a cultural documentation of this complex and majestic animal, with its intelligence, intricte social hierarchy, and highly evolved communication skills, and is caught in a changing world between the past and the future.

An exciting approach to botanical illustration featuring exotic and extraordinary plant specimens. Striking plants, flowers, fruits and vegetables provide new challenges in colour, texture and form. Stunning finished paintings accompany simple instructions and step-by-step projects for a beautiful book that both guides and inspires. Strange and unusual specimens have never been more accessible - as more and more exotic fruit and vegetables appear regularly in our shopping baskets and our florists fill with flowers from every corner of the globe, this practical and beautiful guide to capturing strange and striking plants on paper has never been more timely. There is something for beginners and more experienced botanical illustrators alike, whether you wish to paint more familiar bananas, pineapples and other exotic fruits that are now widely available, or more complex orchids and even carnivorous plants. Acclaimed artists Rosie Martin and Meriel Thurstan (authors of the bestselling Contemporary Botanical Illustration and Botanical Illustration Course) run the popular botanical painting course at the Eden Project and are thus uniquely placed for this exciting take on the genre. The unusual colours and complex textures of exotic plants present a new challenge to the botanical artist, but this book guides you through each stage of the painting process with plenty of exercises and step-by-step projects. Fantastically illustrated with worksheets, colour swatches, sketches and stunning finished paintings this practical and inspirational guide is a must-have for botanical artists of all levels.

This beautiful book is a celebration of the mighty oak, through the passion and vision of artist Mark Frith. Mark has drawn large scale portraits of 22 of Britain's oldest living oaks, with exceptional detail conveyed in these intricate graphite works, bringing the ancient features of these majestic individuals to life on the page. Growing up in the Gloucestershire countryside, Mark enjoyed a childhood experiencing the natural world and in particular developed a huge closeness to a local ancient character - the Great Oak at Nibley Green. Mark would return to this tree in 2010 as the first of his series of oak drawings, commissioned by the publisher, poet, philanthropist and planter of trees Felix Dennis. These large-scale drawings measuring 1.7 m wide took Mark three and a half years to complete and were finished just before Felix Dennis's death in 2014. Following Felix Dennis's wishes, his estate bequeathed 10 of the drawings to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This stunning book is the ideal gift for art and tree lovers alike, and a fitting dedication to these ancient individuals. I hope that in some modest way these drawings express man's profound relationship with the natural world, and, if it has one, something of the soul of the ancient oak tree. Mark Frith

Botanical Illustration - the complete guide explains the processes and methods behind this beautiful art genre. It highlights the importance of the requisite skills of close observation, accurate drawing and attention to detail. Leigh Ann Gale is a leading botanical artist and tutor, and she generously demonstrates her approach in this book. Her worked example of fuchsia magellanica illustrates the varied stages of an illustration. Along with step-by-step instructions to a range of subjects, this book is beautifully illustrated with over 350 images, diagrams and paintings of her and her students' work. This book is a source of inspiration as well as a definitive guide.

"Nature and Its Symbols is the fifth volume in the series A Guide to Imagery, reference guides whose goal is to explain the symbols used in art. This volume includes chapters on plants, flowers, fruits, and animals of the earth, air, and water, as well as fantastical creatures such as centaurs, griffons, and dragons. The vivid illustrations, which include paintings and tapestries from some of the world's premier museums, are accompanied by texts that offer careful analyses of the artists' depictions of the natural world. Each entry discusses the symbolic significance of the particular plant, fruit, or animal portrayed, its mythic or literary origins, and the episodes or individuals associated with it. These salient points are also called out in summary form within each entry, making the information easily accessible. The reader discovers, for example, that the iris can represent Jesus or the purity of the Virgin Mary as well as the kings of France or the city of Florence. The monkey, which can be symbolic of the devil, heresy, or bad temper, is also associated with the three wise men who traveled to Bethlehem to pay homage to the infant Jesus. By bringing to life the natural world as portrayed in art, this book will surely be an indispensable resource for museum visitors, art lovers, and students.

Drawing and Painting Plants is a practical manual on how to paint a vast range of plants in a wide range of media. Drawing on her experience as a botanical art teacher, Christina Brodie takes a holistic approach to botanical art. She covers botanical terminology; drawing and painting techniques; dissection and examination of plants; fieldwork studies; microscope work and tips on presentation of your work. The clear step-by-step instructions are beautifully illustrated with Christina's own work which serves as an inspiration. Having been taken through the various techniques in clear steps, you will be able to draw and paint plants with remarkable precision and stunning detail.

This is the first-ever monograph dedicated to the theme of horses in works of art from the collection of the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. Home to a rich and diverse collection, the museum has embraced the long relationship between man and horse, as well as all the leading themes and genres of equine art. Generations of Russian artists have created an astounding variety of equine images. These works - encompassing painting, sculpture and graphic art - are stunning, lyrical representations of this noble animal. The gorgeous illustrations are accompanied by an introductory essay, as well as artists' biographies.

NEW IN PAPERBACK Learn how to paint realistic fruit, vegetables and blossom with this beautifully illustrated watercolour course. Billy Showell's amazing paintings and vibrant palette are showcased here as she clearly explains how to create a huge selection of shapes and textures using detailed step-by-step instructions. Starting with basic techniques and use of colour, she shows how to capture the individuality of spiralling artichokes, the smooth contours of aubergines, the sumptuous reds of glossy peppers, the cool yellows of bananas, the subtle hues of blossom and more. Using traditional methods, overlaying washes, dry brush techniques, glazing, masking - she develops pictures that are exciting and different, sometimes with an unconventional and amusing twist that takes the images on to new, contemporary levels. Explanations on drawing, composition, lighting, painting white subjects are included, along with many different ideas and dozens of useful and helpful tips.

Susan Herbert's delightful feline reimaginings of famous scenes from art, theatre, opera, ballet and film have won her a devoted following. This unprecedented new compilation of her best paintings provides an irresistible introduction to her feline world. An array of cat characters take the starring roles in a variety of instantly recognizable settings. The masterpieces of Western art retain their distinctive styles while being cleverly filled with furry faces and pussycat tails. Cats then take to the stage in Shakespearean dramas and lavishly staged opera productions. The final stop is Hollywood, where cats are cast in everything from big-budget epics to cult classics, emulating the timeless glamour of the golden age of cinema. From Botticelli's Birth of Venus through Puccini's Tosca to James Dean and Lawrence of Arabia, Susan Herbert's brilliantly observed feline dramatis personae are a joy to discover.