Images of animals are all around us. Yet the visibility offered by wildlife photography can't help but contribute to an image of the animal as fundamentally separate from the human. But how can we get closer to animals without making them aware of us or changing their relationship to their environment?

The Blind might be the answer. Developed for naturalists by the Institute of Critical Zoologists, the Blind is a camouflage cloak that works on the principle that an object vanishes from sight if light rays striking it are not reflected, but are instead forced to flow around as if it were not there. In fifty stunning color photographs, this volume""shows the cloak tested in nature reserves, grasslands, and urban environments. By taking the human out of the picture, "The Blind" offers an opportunity to explore how we see animals in photography.

This book is one of a series of volumes resulting from the World Archaeological Congress, September 1986 which addressed world archaeology in its widest sense, investigating how people lived in the past and how and why changes took place to result in the forms of society and culture which exist now. The series brought together archaeologists and anthropologists from many parts of the world, academics from contingent disciplines, and also non-academics from a wide range of cultural backgrounds who could lend their own expertise to the discussions. This book is an exploration of the way in which the animal world features in the works of art of a variety of cultures of different times and places. Contributors have adopted a variety of perspectives for looking at the complex ways in which past and present humans have interrelated with beings they classify as animals. Some of the approaches are predominantly economic and ecological, some are symbolic and others philosophical or theological. All these different views are included in the interpretation of the artworks of the past, revealing some of the foci and inspirations of cultural attitudes to animals. Originally published 1989.

Animals were everywhere in the early modern period and they impacted, at least in some way, the lives of every kind of early modern person, from the humblest peasant to the greatest prince. Artists made careers based on depicting them. English gentry impoverished themselves spending money on them. Humanists exercised their scholarship writing about them. Pastors saved souls delivering sermons on them. Nobles forged alliances competing with them. Foreigners and indigenes negotiated with one another through trading them. The nexus between animal-human relationships and early modern identity is illuminated in this volume by the latest research of international scholars working on the history of art, literature, and of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany, France, England, Spain, and South Africa. Collectively, these essays investigate how animals - horses, dogs, pigs, hogs, fish, cattle, sheep, birds, rhinoceroses, even sea-monsters and other creatures - served people in Europe, England, the Americas, and Africa to defend, contest or transcend the boundaries of early modern identities. Developments in the methodologies employed by scholars to interrogate the past have opened up an intellectual and discursive space for - and a concomitant recognition of - the study of animals as a topic that significantly elucidates past and present histories. Relevant to a considerable array of disciplines, the study of animals also provides a means to surmount traditional disciplinary boundaries through processes of dynamic interchange and cross-fertilization.

The jewel-like watercolours of renowned Irish botanical artist Wendy Walsh portray a personal selection of about 100 plants that grow wild in Ireland or are cultivated in Irish gardens. Presented in 33 thematic sections,Walsh's subjects range from well-loved and distinctive native plants to exotic species introduced from the New World and Asia, unusual plants that grow in some of the most extreme environments in Ireland, and striking hybrids created by plant breeders. Lively and accessible horticultural descriptions by distinguished botanist E. Charles Nelson accompany the paintings, celebrating the story of each plant along with its natural beauty. The great gardens, famous plantsmen, fascinating journeys and natural phenomena that have shaped the flora of Ireland spring to life in Dr Nelson's engaging text. This elegant and unconventional guide will kindle the imagination of any plant lover or admirer of the Irish landscape.

Blue Ridge Dreaming celebrates the magic and drama of one of the most breathtaking landscapes in the United States. When New York native Mike Poggioli moved to Asheville, North Carolina, he traded in cityscapes for the towering peaks, lush forests, and sparkling rivers of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His moody, dreamy landscapes follow golden light and delicate fog through the changing seasons with his distinctive color palette of oranges and blues. Home to the country's two most popular national parks - the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park - the Blue Ridge area has fascinated nature lovers for centuries with its beauty. Let Mike Poggioli and Blue Ridge Dreaming transport you to this gorgeous terrain.

The secrets to creating stunning landscapes are at your fingertips with Digital Mayhem 3D Landscapes Techniques. Compiled by Duncan Evans, launch Editor of 3D Artist Magazine, Digital Mayhem features a variety of beautiful art from some of the finest digital artists working today. Inspiration and technique meet here as you learn how to create every type of landscape from harsh desert savannahs to icy tundra. Using a blend of showcase images, step-by-step and long-form tutorials, you will be guided through the featured artist's process so you can incorporate their techniques and workflow into your own projects. Not just another button-pushing manual or coffee table book, Digital Mayhem will help develop your critical eye for composition, choice of camera lens, lighting, rendering, and post production, allowing you to work more intuitively. With insight from some of the best digital artists in the world, Digital Mayhem will have you creating your own masterpiece in no time! Unique coverage on a variety of software allows you to hone your skills across different platforms. Illustrious and colorful artwork coupled with artist insight will both inspire and inform your creative decisions. Comprehensive companion website offers additional resources for you to further expand your skillset.

Tracing the life of the plants and animals of Forrestdale Lake through the six seasons of the local indigenous people, the first part of Black Swan Lake presents a wetlands calendar over a yearly cycle of the rising, falling and drying waters of this internationally important wetland in south-western Australia. The second part of this book considers issues and explores themes from the first part, including a cultural history of the seasons and the black swan. Black Swan Lake is a book of nature writing and environmental history and philosophy arising from living in a particular place with other beings. The book is a guide to living simply and sustainably with the earth in troubled times and places by making and maintaining a strong attachment and vital connection to a local place and its flora and fauna. Local places and their living processes sustain human and other life on this living earth.

Brimming with over 300 botanical motifs, this wonderful resource will provide inspiration and instructions for embroidery artists and flower ladies everywhere. This collection features designs including flowers, ferns, succulents, leaves, bees and garden scenes. The books includes basic embroidery instruction for stitches and transferring designs onto fabric. Original designs and clear instructions make this book a must have for any embroidery enthusiast's library.

This dazzling collection showcases the very best of the British Wildlife Photography Awards, presenting over 150 of the winning, commended and shortlisted images from the 2017 competition. Featuring a range of photography from world-leading professionals as well as inspired amateurs, it is a book that captures the magnificent diversity of the British Isles. British Wildiife Photography Awards is divided into the competition's fifteen categories, from Animal Portraits through to the Young People's Awards. Every photograph is beautifully reproduced in a large format, with detailed technical information alongside the photographer's personal account, to appeal to both photographers and natural historians.

Draw Like an Artist: 100 Flowers and Plants is a must-have visual reference for student artists, botanical illustrators, urban sketchers, and anyone seeking to improve their realistic drawing skills. This comprehensive book features 600-plus step-by-step sketches depicting a vast array of beautiful botanicals, florals, plant structures, and more. Each begins with simple shapes and lines and builds on those forms, adding details like flower centers, leaf veins, and petal shading, and ending with a finished drawing. Helpful drawing tips are also included. Designed as a contemporary guidebook for artists who want to draw botanical forms, Draw Like an Artist: 100 Flowers and Plants shows flower blossoms, leaves, and plants from a variety of perspectives. By following the guides, artists will become more skilled and confident in their ability to draw any flower or greenery. Among the botanicals featured are: Tropical florals such as plumeria, protea, and African violet Hanging and vine blooms, including wisteria and morning glory Birch, white oak, gingko, and maple leaves Plants with interesting shapes, such as cactus, zebra grass, and bamboo Author Melissa Washburn is a skilled illustrator whose clear and elegant drawing style will make this a go-to sourcebook for years to come. The books in the Draw Like an Artist series are richly visual references for learning how to draw classic subjects realistically through hundreds of step-by-step images created by expert artists and illustrators.

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.

This book explores American landscape painting today, its relevance in the contemporary art world, and its historic roots. This volume profiles sixty individual living artists whose contributions distinguish important aspects of the genre and address land use, nature appreciation, and ecology through landscape painting. Encompassing every style from traditional realism (with a contemporary edge) to abstraction and non-objectivity, these contemporary artists range from today's art stars to emerging or regionally recognized talent in the eastern, western, and southwestern regions of the nation. An additional chapter addresses urban landscapes nationally. The range of styles and reputations presented creates an encompassing survey of the trends and enduring elements in this genre of painting and the art market today.

A beautifully designed organiser to keep all your information for contacts, co-workers, family and friends in one place. This stylish and elegantly designed address book has plenty of space to record names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses for everyone you need to stay in touch with. With colour-coded alphabetical sections, a silk ribbon marker and beautiful floral images throughout from the world-famous RHS Lindley Library, this decorative address book makes the perfect gift!

Learn how to paint adorable animals, flavorful fruits, lively plants, and more in this free-and-easy approach to watercolor. Artist Natalia Skatula has a beautiful, whimsical style that will charm you through 12 simple step-by-step projects and over 100 worked examples. Beginning with an overview on materials and equipment, Natalia then covers the general techniques needed to achieve the paintings, along with her top-10 personal tips for success. Projects include: A majestic whale An adorable sloth Elephants Pandas Dogs Llamas Bears Foxes Rabbits And more! This book also includes a range of presentation ideas to inspire you to put your finished work on display or gift it. The gallery of examples that follows includes plants, cats, beetles, birds, sealife, jungle creatures and fruits, giving you a treasure-trove of references for your painting. This book also makes the perfect gift for artists of all ages, especially plant and animal lovers. Find the inspiration and technique to start your watercoloring adventures with this beautiful guide!

Botanical and scientific illustration share many common themes - the meticulous observation, the crucial composition, the precision of rendering and the accuracy of colour are all intrinsic to this niche genre of art. In this beautiful book, Sarah Jane Humphrey explains the techniques of the botanical artist but also introduces ideas for scientific illustration, so that the illustrator has a fuller understanding when rendering the natural world. Detailed instruction on all aspects of illustration is given, from application and materials to research and field trips. There is practical advice on using monochrome and colour theory to bring your illustration to life. Illustrated with over 200 of the author's exquisite illustrations, it is an invaluable companion for both beginners and experienced artists, as well as a source of inspiration and joy.

Ranunculus offers advice on how to care for and propagate these colourful cultivated members of the buttercup family. Naomi Slade explores a wide range of ranunculus species and cultivars, all beautifully photographed by Georgianna Lane in their technicolour glory from palest pink to deep burgundy via white, orange, red and yellow. Pert as a rosebud and blousy as a dahlia, Ranunculus asiaticus is the flower of the moment. From ancestors that grew wild in the eastern Mediterranean, these Persian buttercups have been bred and selected to create fully double blooms; with layers of delicate, tissue-paper petals sculpted to perfection and available in a range of colours to suit any occasion. The buttercup family is a huge and diverse one, however, and the genus Ranunculus contains not just these exotic florists' darlings, but a whole range of their close relatives too. Some are familiar: when fields and lawns are sprinkled with golden meadow buttercups, we can be sure that spring has arrived. Yet there are also rare mountain blooms, perched on crags and fed by the melting snow, and forms of Ranunculus that thrive in pond margins or flourish in fast-flowing streams. Naomi Slade explores the world of buttercups, from their wild origins to their most successfully cultivated and most popular forms. Some are easy to grow, some less so, and this book offers tips and advice to help the reader embrace not just those near-wild forms that lend themselves to naturalistic planting schemes, and the exquisite, collectible alpines, but also the brilliant, desirable, Persian buttercups that are so perfect for cutting and arranging.

'The beginnings of a bitter-sweet commission: a mistle thrust's egg, heralding a brief but very welcome return to spring... This year has been in such a hurry, at times almost tripping over itself in its keenness to reach autumn, and now she's here.' Highly respected illustrator Anna Koska is best known for her drawings of fish and fruit and is widely celebrated by food journalists and restaurateurs. In this mindful, artistic journal, Anna celebrates the natural world; the changing of the seasons, the blossoming of flowers and the ripening of fruit. Working in watercolour, pen and ink, oils and luscious egg tempera, Anna's illustrations are reproduced in beautiful detail and they are accompanied by her musings and observations of objects, engaging us in the everyday realities of her artistic practice. Anna sources inspiration from the flora and fauna in the fields and forests surrounding her home in East Sussex. Her illustrations root us in nature, allowing us to pause to admire and appreciate the beauty and significance of everyday occurrences - whether she is drawing wasps feasting on apples fallen in the orchard, or trying to capture the cerulean blue of a winter sky. In this book, image and narrative text are wedded to create a beautiful journey through the seasons, taking time to appreciate our surroundings. 'It started with my favourite fish, a red mullet, all bronze, copper, gills and scales. Then mackerel, coloured like a Scandi sky. Soon enough, I was seduced by a sketch of figs and Anna's alluring tones.' Allan Jenkins, Observer Food Magazine.

Do you recognise these ingredients? 35 recipes as you've never seen them before. A gorgeous gift book as well as a cookery title, Dinner Deconstructed features 35 recipes as you've never seen them before, broken down into their individual ingredients and photographed in stylish still-life arrangements. Serried rows of vegetables and small heaps of flour turn into a comforting cauliflower bake, the ingredients of steak bernaise boil down to meat, peppercorns, eggs, butter and herbs, and key lime pie looks mesmerising before the ingredients are magically melded together in the kitchen. And after you've feasted your eyes on the dishes in their natural and aesthetically pleasing state, simply turn to the back of the book to get the recipes themselves, so you can turn the raw ingredients into the delicious dishes they were destined to be. Word count: 7,000

"Whether you are an experienced birder or just learning natural history, this book will deepen your sense of place and open insights to beauty, wonder, and connection to the natural world."-John Muir Laws, author of The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada Now in paperback! This charming, full-color field guide to 25 birds easily found in Berkeley proves that even the city's avian residents are a little quirky. Meticulously detailed illustrations capture each bird's distinctive physicality and temperament. A Burrowing Owl faces you in a full head-on shot, perhaps having just raised its raspy, chattering alarm call as you trespass on its last remaining Bay Area foothold at the Marina. The Anna's Hummingbird gives you a coy backward glance to assess if you've properly admired its flashing throat feathers, maybe having just performed its signature J-shaped courtship dive. While descriptions of identification and vocalizations are straightforward, author-illustrator Oliver James takes a delightfully creative approach to his write-ups of each species. A joy to read and pore over, Birds of Berkeley will enchant readers far beyond the city limits with its findings gleaned from painstaking and patient wildlife observation.

When the gun smoke cleared, four men were found dead at the hardware store in a rural East Texas town. But this December 1934 shootout was no anomaly. San Augustine County had seen at least three others in the previous three years, and these murders in broad daylight were only the latest development in the decade-long rule of the criminal McClanahan-Burleson gang. Armed with handguns, Jim Crow regulations, and corrupt special Ranger commissions from infamous governors ""Ma"" and ""Pa"" Ferguson, the gang racketeered and bootlegged its way into power in San Augustine County, where it took up robbing and extorting local black sharecroppers as its main activity. After the hardware store shootings, white community leaders, formerly silenced by fear of the gang's retribution, finally sought state intervention. In 1935, fresh-faced, newly elected governor James V. Allred made good on his promise to reform state law enforcement agencies by sending a team of qualified Texas Rangers to San Augustine County to investigate reports of organized crime. In East Texas Troubles, historian Jody Edward Ginn tells of their year-and-a-half-long cleanup of the county, the inaugural effort in Governor Allred's transformation of the Texas Rangers into a professional law enforcement agency. Besides foreshadowing the wholesale reform of state law enforcement, the Allred Rangers' investigative work in San Augustine marked a rare close collaboration between white law enforcement officers and black residents. Drawing on firsthand accounts and the sworn testimony of black and white residents in the resulting trials, Ginn examines the consequences of such cooperation in a region historically entrenched in racial segregation. In this story of a rural Texas community's resurrection, Ginn reveals a multifaceted history of the reform of the Texas Rangers and of an unexpected alliance between the legendary frontier lawmen and black residents of the Jim Crow South.

Unleash the creative power of Procreate to bring outdoor scenes to life on your iPad, from thumbnail designs to final images. In this book for newcomers to the software as well as more accomplished users, several renowned and experienced designers demonstrate plein air painting, sharing not only their professional tips and tricks, but also how the traditional painting process translates to Procreate. You will become fluent in using Procreate for all stages of outdoor painting - capturing the spirit and essence of a landscape, subject, or building by incorporating natural light, color, and movement into your works. The thorough Getting Started section spotlights the specific Procreate tools, such as Brushes, Layers, and Adjustments, that bring your paintings to life. Perfecting color and nuance of sky, land, and human subjects outdoors is vital, and the Quick Tips section lets you quickly locate and manipulate the tools you need. Take the opportunity to observe and practice the techniques as part of a real-world workflow, as professional artists demonstrate in seven step-by-step Projects how to use Procreate's tools to successfully evolve a plein-air painting from initial idea to final masterpiece. Whether or not you have used Procreate before, Beginner's Guide to Procreate: Plein Air ensures your passion for outdoor painting can be fully realized on the iPad screen.