Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Jeff Kurus, Publisher The Tale of Jacob Swift is a photo-fiction story recounting the struggles and triumphs that one swift fox family experiences in raising its son in the harsh but beautiful grasslands of North America. Written by Jeff Kurrus with photographic imagery by Rob Palmer, this book about Jacob is sure to prompt discussion between parent and child regarding the circle of life.

Where does the apricot tree come from? Why is the oak-tree regarded as the king of all trees? What is made from the walnut tree? Why were lindens planted around churches in the Middle Ages? What are the birch-tree's pharmaceutical properties? Why is the yew's shade deemed to be dangerous? Exquisitely illustrated with colourful lithographs, this little album is a pocket-sized encyclopaedia, containing hundreds of anecdotes on around 80 species of trees. Also available in the series: The Little Book of Cats ISBN 9782812317408 The Little Book of Dogs ISBN 9782812318580 The Little Books of New York ISBN 9782812315329 The Little Book of Paris ISBN 9782812313318 The Little Books of Birds ISBN 9782812316364 The Little book of Versailles ISBN 9782812317804 The Little Book of Roses ISBN 9782379640810 The Little Book of Medicinal Plants ISBN 9782812319815 The Little Book of The Language of Flowers ISBN 9782812318924 The Little Book of The Moon ISBN 9782379641046

Snow scenes are a popular subject of painters all year round. In this inspiring and accessible guide, best-selling author and popular tutor Terry Harrison shares a wealth of tips and techniques for painting snow in watercolour. Suitable for artists of all abilities, Terry shows you how to capture the beauty of snow-covered landscapes using easy techniques. The book begins with guidance on colour mixes and brushes for achieving different effects, and moves on to step-by-step demonstrations of painting snow-laden trees, frozen streams, wintry skies, falling snow, and the warm glow of a low winter sun. He provides valuable tips on using photographs for reference, and turning a summer landscape into a snow-covered one. There's also a section on how to create a traditional Christmas scene, and how to turn it into a Christmas card. With numerous examples of Terry's beautiful artwork, this book is a truly indispensable guide for anyone wishing to paint snow scenes in watercolour.

This book provides a thorough and expert guide to the subject of botanical drawing, through detailed text, examples of the author's own studies, short exercises and larger projects. Penny Brown produces traditional botanical drawings primarily rendered in pencil. The book touches on the history of botanical drawing, the rules and practicalities, and includes an accessible, basic study of botany for the absolute beginner. From creating an initial line drawing to adding tone and then creating more complex compositions, Botanical Drawing is a detailed study of the practice for anyone wishing to explore the subject in great depth, led by an expert artist.

Join artist Sarah Simblet on an inspirational journey of discovery as she makes drawings of every type of plant. From the tiniest mosses to exotic flowers and majestic trees, this book shows how understanding botany will give your portraits of plants vibrancy and life. In Botany for the Artist, Sarah Simblet takes you on a personal tour of the kingdom of plants, encouraging you to observe them more closely and draw them more accurately. Complemented by beautiful photographs, Sarah's drawings reveal the structure of roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits as she explains how plants breathe, feed, and produce fruits. If you have ever wondered how photosynthesis works, why leaves change colour in the autumn, or how seeds know when to grow, Botany for the Artist has all the answers. Step-by-step drawing classes and detailed pages from Sarah's sketchbooks guide you through all the techniques that you need to draw plants successfully. Masterclasses by famous artists - from Renaissance masters to contemporary illustrators - showcase different approaches to botanical illustration over the centuries. Botany for the Artist is a visual feast, not just for anyone wishing to master drawing plants, but for gardeners, photographers, and everyone who is passionate about plants and how they are portrayed in art.

The Photographed Cat presents readers with an examination of how human-cat relationships are depicted in early twentieth-century photography.

A fascinating exploration of the time Winslow Homer spent in England and how it influenced his art Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is widely regarded as the greatest American painter of the 19th century, but it is not well known that he spent a pivotal period of time on the other side of the Atlantic. The eighteen months Homer spent in England in 1881 and 1882-studying the work of masters such as J. M. W. Turner and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and exploring the landscape of coastal villages-irrevocably shaped his creative identity. This beautifully designed and produced publication explores Homer's time in England and how it influenced his art, as he attempted to reconcile his affinity for traditional subject matter with his increasingly modern aesthetic vision. Coming Away complicates our understanding of his work and convincingly argues that it has more cosmopolitan underpinnings than previously thought.

This sumptuous book is not a reference work, nor it is simply a collection of beautiful flowers. It is the product of a longstanding collaboration between renowned flower artist Makoto and botanical photographer Shunsuke Shiinoki. Working together, they have selected hundreds of plant species and arranged them in striking combinations that could never exist in the natural world, so creating a unique floral aesthetic. The result is a series of dense, luxuriant images, rich in colour and texture, in which nature and artifice are skilfully mingled. The four chapters are themed according to the cycle of the seasons: the freshness and new life of spring, the exuberance and abundance of summer, the fading grandeur of autumn and the deepening shadows of winter. Recalling the opulent still-life paintings of the 17th century, the photographs not only capture the surface beauty of the flowers, but suggest the burgeoning life brimming within them as well as its transience. From the sensuality of opening petals to the unfurling elegance of fern fronds, these gorgeous displays are vividly preserved in a meditative and inspirational book that will enchant all lovers of nature and art.

Experience the beauty, essence and character of thirty North American bird species. Inspired by traditional Asian brushwork and haiku, the artwork and text by Vanessa Sorensen capture the quirky traits peculiar to each species. Zen Birds celebrates the amazing lives of birds--a must-have for any bird lover or nature enthusiast.

Through words and photographs, environmental scientist Gretchen C. Daily and photographer Charles J. Katz describe how one relict tree-the magnificent Ceiba pentandra in Sabalito, Costa Rica-carries physical and spiritual importance. The people in the town of Sabalito call the tree la ceiba, a term said to be derived from a Taino word referring to a type of wood used for making canoes in the West Indies. Ceiba evokes times and places where people hollowed out the great cylindrical trunks and glided along languid rivers winding through lush tropical forest. Today the tree is known by different names in regions ranging from southern Mexico and the Caribbean to the southern edge of the Amazon Basin and in western Africa. The ceiba has survived what is probably the highest rate of tropical deforestation in the world. It is a legendary and vital tree in centuries-old forests in places like Costa Rica that were once almost completely forested (98 percent in the mid-twentieth century) and decades later have suffered devastating deforestation (34 percent by 1980). One Tree grew out of a conversation between photographer Chuck Katz and acclaimed ecologist Gretchen Daily about the relict tree-a single tree that remains standing in a pasture, for example, after the forest has been cleared from the land, and takes on iconic importance for the animals, plants, and people in the ecosystem. During a trip the authors took to Costa Rica, Katz focused his lens on the ceiba and a story was born. In descriptive language interwoven with scientific fact, Daily discusses the tree's historical and natural history and the ceiba species in general. She touches on the science of the Costa Rican rainforest and its deforestation and the cultural traditions, legends, and folklore of forests and relict trees. Katz's photographs of the massive tree and the village that takes care of it create an intimate work celebrating the visual and biological intricacies of trees.

This beautiful mix of art and science offers a breathtaking look at the way that contemporary scientific discoveries are changing our understanding of plants and plant evolution. 136 botanical paintings from the Shirley Sherwood Collection, by 84 artists, cover 50 orders of plants in 118 families, and a total of 133 species, providing a sweeping overview of the evolution of plants on earth. The paintings display a sampling of the living world from fungi to daisies, including algae, mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants, arranged in the most up to date evolutionary sequence, determined by recent DNA analysis. The text places each artist's observations in the context of modern plant classification, providing readers with a new understanding of the complex interrelationships between plant species, and enhancing their appreciation of the botanical artist's ability to portray the delicate beauty of nature.

In the mid-1800s, a group of painters based in New York turned their focus to the theme of the natural landscape to demonstrate the beauty of the wilderness. Their work enjoyed a popular national success that no other group of artists has achieved since. This seminal survey of the artists marks the first presentation of the outstanding collection at the New-York Historical Society. It features works by all the greatest artists of the group, including Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church. Accompanying a major traveling exhibition, the book is also timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's first voyage up the Hudson River.

Beaches, marshes, mangroves; cliffs, deserts, forests; bays, deltas, estuaries - coastlines take many different forms and are put to very different uses. From deserted beaches to busy ports, from pretty fishing villages to a surfers' paradise, a salt marsh to a ship-breakers' yard, Coasts celebrates where the land meets the sea. From beautiful coastal paths to the shipwrecks left high and dry in the Aral Sea, from world famous locations such as Copacabana Beach in Brazil and Big Sur in California to the little explored coastlines of Yemen and Oman, from Algeria to Antarctica, the Amalfi Coast to the Dead Sea, the book celebrates a huge range in coastlines from all around the world. Including nature reserves and tourist resorts, rugged landscapes and desert island tranquility, fjords and fossils, eroding cliffs to whole towns lost to the waters, the book explores coastlines in all climates and conditions around the globe. Presented in a landscape format and with captions explaining the story behind each entry, Coasts is a stunning collection of images and stories.

Art of Nature is an astonishing visual record of the exploration of parts of the natural world that had never previously been documented. It features many of the greatest natural history artists of the last 300 years--Merian, Bartram, Ehret, the Bauer brothers, Audubon, and Gould. Some were seeking fame as scientists or artists, others sought financial gain or at least the prospect of earning a living in what they loved doing. For some it also provided them with the opportunity to present their view of nature to a wider community. Whatever the reasons, few would have contradicted Humboldt's comment that he was "spurred on by an uncertain longing for what is distant and unknown, for whatever excited my fantasy: danger at sea, the desire for adventures, to be transported from a boring daily life to a marvellous world." Continent by continent, Judith Magee draws on the unrivaled collections of the Library of the Natural History Museum in London to illustrate the development of natural history art through the centuries and its crucial role in furthering people's appreciation of nature all around the world.

"The intersection of fact and feeling is very important in my work. It drives my work in general, and in particular for Lennox Woods," explains Deborah Paris. Having spent the past year physically and psychologically immersed in Texas's northeast Lennox Woods, the state's only remaining old-growth forest, Paris has forged a deeply intimate relationship with her subject matter.

A veteran landscape painter and self-described artist-naturalist, Paris translates how Lennox Woods looks and how it feels, re-creating its live, three-dimensional environment on the two-dimensional picture plane. Through a convergence of literal observation and soulfulness, the artist-naturalist conveys the true essence of her subject matter to evoke the sublime. Thick with virgin timber and rare and endangered plant and animal species, Lennox Woods exists as tangible history, an example of how the land looked before the settlers arrived. This book represents the culmination of Deborah Paris's eighteen-month "residency" in the 375-acre Lennox Woods Preserve.

Where the windswept Patagonian steppe meets the Andes, and the massive unclimbed south wall of Cerro San Lorenzo looks down on the Lacteo Valley: Perito Moreno National Park is a stronghold of wild nature. In a region so alluring that is has become synonymous with beauty at the end of the Earth, Perito Moreno National Park is an icon of Patagonia. Named in honor of revered early conservationist Perito Moreno, the "John Muir of Argentina," this relatively little visited park is a magnet for intrepid travelers and ambitious alpinists. Legendary businessman and philanthropist Douglas Tompkins (founder of The North Face) contributes the book's foreword. In a book as grand as the natural area it celebrates, "Perito Moreno National Park" presents a stunning collection of images of the park by renowned landscape photographer Antonio Vizcaino. With supporting essays from experts on the park's natural and cultural history, this elegant volume offers an armchair tour of one of the world's most scenic and unsullied landscapes. For all of who dream of Patagonia, "Perito Moreno National Park" is a ticket into the heart of the wild.

Whether highly bred canines or loveable mixed breeds, America has fallen in love with the dog, and who better than Christine Merrill, America's premier pet portraitist, to chronicle this long term relationship. As best selling author Barbara Taylor Bradford exclaims, She has caught my Jemmy exactly; the portrait is perfect in every way. While grounded in the traditions of 18th and 19th century England, this Baltimore artist has over the past 20 years created a body of work, which depicts the American dog in its own especially American environment. Each chapter of this book features an American dog owner who has commissioned Merrill to capture their dog in oils, and answer the who, what, where and why's of each collector's story, and how they came to seek out Merrill to portray their dogs - members of the family whose portraits often supplant the portraits of their human relatives. Each chapter is lavishly illustrated, not only with Merrill's paintings, but also with colour photographs of the pet owner with their American dog at home. Merrill's paintings, executed in the centuries old style of the great English masters of animal painting, are timeless testaments to our love for the dog, and Americans all over the country have chosen her to create portraits in oil of their beloved pets. Merrill counts movie stars, authors, socialites and captains of industry among her clients, each with one thing in common: their love for their pets. This book provides a glimpse into these worlds, but more importantly something which each of the 40 million dog owners in America can identify with - their pet's unconditional love. Some thirty-five different dog breeds are represented, from fifteen different states. The first part of the book includes 33 essays on Merrill's clients, illustrated with her paintings, but also photographs of the collectors with their dogs, their collections and their homes, personally photographed by the author, William Secord. Each essay has six color photographs. It is exceptional in its access to the largely private lives of these collectors, providing a unique insight into Americans' relationship with their dogs. The second part of the book traces Merrill's career, with over 50 color illustrations of her paintings.

Walter Potter (1835-1918), a country taxidermist of no great expertise, became famous as an icon of Victorian whimsy. His tiny museum in Bramber, Sussex, was crammed full of multi-legged kittens, two-headed lambs and a bewildering assortment of curios. Closed in the '70s, the museum was variously re-established before being auctioned off in 2003. It was reported that a GBP1M bid by Damien Hirst to keep the collection intact was refused, but in 2010 many of Potter's key pieces were exhibited by the artist Sir Peter Blake at London's 'Museum of Everything', attracting over 30,000 visitors in 6 weeks. The subsequent dispersal of Potter's works has meant the loss of a truly unique Victorian legacy. Here, perhaps for the last time, the collection is preserved and celebrated with new photographs of Potter's best-loved works.