Dave White introduces the simple but effective techniques that he uses to paint stunning, dramatic seascapes with beautiful and realistic skies. He demonstrates spattering, blending backgrounds, painting horizons, finger painting clouds and foam. There is expert advice on the anatomy of waves and how they rise and collapse, creating ripples, surf, foam and spray. Clear instructions show how to paint effective reflections and beaches to improve your seascapes. The sky section shows effective techniques for painting all types of cloud, with some innovative methods such as tipping up the surface to let dilute paint run, to create cirrus clouds. Dave's method of creating depth in sea, beach and sky using lines projected from the vanishing point will radically improve readers' seascapes. There is a section of moods and sunsets full of beautiful, dramatic examples. Finally three step by step projects show how to paint a beach panorama with a rolling wave, a spectacular sunset over a calm sea and waves crashing on rocks.

Explore the deserts, mountains and souks of the Middle East, with best-selling author and artist David Bellamy. Following on from David's highly acclaimed Arctic Light, this book provides an intriguing and often entertaining insight into South Arabia and the Swahili Coast, Jordan, Lebanon and Oman. It describes the history, culture, customs and geography of the region and the daily life of its inhabitants, as viewed through the eyes of a world-renowned watercolour artist and life-long adventurer. Filled with personal anecdotes and humour, David Bellamy's unique account shines a light on the Middle East and highlights the incredible beauty and fascinating culture of this much-neglected region. David's stunning artwork, that he painted during his various expeditions, features throughout the book and captures perfectly the diverse and majestic nature of the region. Watercolourists will be inspired by the author's awe-inspiring ability to depict sweeping vistas and create a sense of space in his paintings, and to capture the very essence of a place through his art.

A passionate advocate of craftsmanship over mass-production, William Morris (1834– 1896) designed a huge variety of objects, but it is his highly original carpet, fabric and wallpaper patterns that have continued to capture the imagination and exert their influence on the decorative arts. Around 600 such designs are attributed to Morris, of which the vast majority are based on natural forms, including trees, plants and flowers.

This beautifully designed, accessibly priced gift book offers a wealth of designs by Morris in which flowers are the principal motif, bringing together not only completed patterns but also working drawings in pen and watercolour, and examples of his pearwood, floral-pattern printing blocks. It also explores examples of the sources that inspired Morris’s flower-based designs: his own gardens at the Red House in Kent, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire and elsewhere; 16th- and 17th-century herbals; illuminated medieval manuscripts; late medieval and Renaissance tapestries; and a range of decorated objects, particularly from the Islamic world, that Morris studied at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A). Authored by Rowan Bain, curator at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, north London, and lavishly illustrated with almost 100 colour illustrations, this exquisite book will both inform and delight

A highly original collection of high magnification photographs that unlock the hidden beauty of seeds and fruit, from the author of Microsculpture

The Hidden Beauty of Seeds & Fruits is a photographic study that celebrates the wonders of nature and science in mind-blowing magnification. Levon Biss’ striking photography captures the breathtaking and beautiful details of the world of carpology, the study of seeds and fruits. Each picture reveals minute features and textures that are normally invisible to the naked eye, providing the audience with an insight into strange and often bizarre adaptations that have evolved over thousands of years. After spending months searching through the carpological collection at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Biss selected over a hundred striking samples to be featured in this book. Captioned with scientific text that provides the backstory for each specimen, The Hidden Beauty of Seeds & Fruits is guaranteed to amaze, entertain, and educate.

A book of deeply personal and lush photographs, drawings, and writing, Blue Violet is Cig Harvey's celebration of the natural world and the senses. Blue Violet is a vibrant meditation on the procession of seasons, sensory abundance, and the magic in everyday life. Part art book, botanical guide, historical encyclopedia, and poetry collection, Blue Violet is a compendium of beauty, color, and the senses. Plants, flowers, and our experience of the natural world are the threads that tie this unique book together. Exploring the five senses, Blue Violet takes the reader on a personal journey through nature and the range of human emotions. As with her previous three titles - You Look At Me Like An Emergency, Gardening at Night, and You an Orchestra You a Bomb - this book invites the reader to pause, laugh, cry, create, and become more aware of the natural world. Images and text in a variety of forms (prose poetry, recipes, lists, research pieces, diagrams) focus on immediate experience to understand the vibrancy of the senses on memory and feelings.

This impressive book is richly illustrated with 91 gorgeous macro photographs - of flowers, and also some of their pollinators - by John Rodrigues, an artist who has taken that time to truly see. We invite you to sit back, maybe with a cup of hot Chamomile tea, and indulge in these images - taking the time to truly see these flowers, and to appreciate their inherent majesty. John Rodrigues takes an old lens and new camera and gives us a new look at an old photographic subject.

The life and art of the 18th-century naturalist Mark Catesby, and his pioneering work depicting the flora and fauna of North America, are explored in vibrant detail This book explores the life and work of the celebrated eighteenth-century English naturalist, explorer, artist and author Mark Catesby (1683-1749). During Catesby's lifetime, science was poised to shift from a world of amateur virtuosi to one of professional experts. Working against a backdrop of global travel that incorporated collecting and direct observation of nature, Catesby spent two prolonged periods in the New World - in Virginia (1712-19) and South Carolina and the Bahamas (1722-6). In his majestic two-volume Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731-43), esteemed by his contemporary John Bartram as 'an ornament for the finest library in the world', he reflected the excitement, drama and beauty of the natural world. Interweaving elements of art history, history of science, natural history illustration, painting materials, book history, paper studies, garden history and colonial history, this meticulously researched volume brings together a wealth of unpublished images as well as newly discovered letters by Catesby, which, with their first-hand accounts of his collecting and encounters in the wild, bring the story of this extraordinary pioneer naturalist vividly to life. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

International Floral Art 2021/2022 is an expertly curated collection of floral design showing the bounty of nature in many ingenious and magnificent ways. It is an anthology of floral inspiration, a love letter to nature itself and a testimony to the boundless nature of human creativity. Over 130 floral designers let their imagination run wild to push the boundaries of the craft and make us revel in the unexpected. Established floral artists as well as the up and coming generation of designers amaze and seduce with spectacular floral creations that reveal a strong artistic vision, great craftsmanship, an enormous degree of commitment and an extraordinary amount of effort. International Floral Art 2021/2022 is a stunning coffee table book with over 240 designs that will start conversation and spark the imagination.

The spectacular close-up images contained in this book show nature in a new light. The curious and inquiring photographic lens of Giovanni De Sandre reveals unexpected details, an amazing world hidden in well-known plants, some of which we use in the kitchen every day. Naturalis fons delivers a clear message to its reader: to appreciate the wonders of nature by learning to look with new eyes at the most common and apparently insignificant plants. Text in English, Italian and French.

Artists and naturalists will master their ability to render lifelike depictions of a wide range of wildlife in a variety of still and action poses in this unique instructional. Amberlyn begins by offering a discourse on animal anatomy, basic animal structure and characteristics, and the animals' natural environment. Such details are examined and explored through more than 300 detailed animal studies.
More advanced topics include drawing the three major animal categories: carnivores/omnivores (wolves, coyotes, weasels, raccoons, and bears), hoofed mammals (deer, elk, moose, caribou, and sheep), and small mammals (rabbits, squirrels, mice, beaver, and armadillo). Readers will transform their mediocre interpretations into drawings that truly capture the essence and subtleties of the animal, its mood, and its habitat.

Cats were just as favored in ancient Egypt as they are today. Egyptian paintings of domesticated cats date back 3,600 years, and animal cults included worship to the cat goddess Bastet. This AUC Press Nature Foldout explores wild and domestic cats of Egypt: large cats like the Cheetah, the Leopard, and the Caracal, which are all extremely threatened or near extinction within Egypt; and smaller cats including the African Wild Cat, Swamp Cat, Sand Cat, and Egyptian Mau. Whether wild or household pets, cats have long been beloved by people. - Each species described and illustrated, alongside examples of their natural prey in the wild - Map of Egypt describing the various habitats of wild cats, as well as locations of ancient Egyptian sites where the cat was worshiped and mummified - Noted appearances of felines in hieroglyphs and reliefs - Conservation efforts for threatened cat species About the series: The AUC Press Nature Foldout series combine, in beautifully practical form, a wealth of information written by leading experts with striking full-color illustrations on the flora and fauna of Egypt and the Middle East. Designed for nature lovers and outdoor adventurers, as well as for indoor use, the foldouts come in an easily foldable format, at once compact, waterproof, and portable, making them durable and convenient travel guides. Size is 23 x 8.5 in. / 58.5 x 21.5 cm unfolded.

The story of the canine has been fundamentally entwined with that of humanity since the earliest times, and this ancient and fascinating story is told in Susan McHugh's Dog, now available in B-format. The book unravels the debate about whether dogs are descended from wolves, and moves on to deal with canines in mythology, religion and health, dog cults in ancient and medieval civilizations as disparate as Alaska, Greece, Peru and Persia, and traces correspondences between the histories of dogs in the Far East, Europe, Africa and the Americas. Dog also examines the relatively recent phenomenon of dog breeding and the invention of species, as well as the canine's role in science fact and fiction; from Laika, the first astronaut, and Pavlov's famous conditioned dogs, through to science fiction novels and cult films such as A Boy and his Dog. Susan McHugh shows how dogs today contribute to human lives in a huge number of ways, not only as pets and guide dogs but also as sources of food in Asia, entertainment workers, and scientific and religious objects. Dog reveals how we have shaped these animals over the millennia, and in turn, how dogs have shaped us.

Through 140 drawings, thought experiments, recipes, activist instructions, gardening ideas, insurgences and personal revolutions, artists who spend their lives thinking outside the box guide you to a new worldview; where you and the planet are one. Everything here is new. We invite you to rip out pages, to hang them up at home, to draw and scribble, to cook, to meditate, to take the book to your nearest green space. Featuring Olafur Eliasson, Etel Adnan, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jane Fonda & Swoon, Judy Chicago, Black Quantum Futurism Collective, Vivienne Westwood, Cauleen Smith, Marina Abramovic, Karrabing Film Collective, and many more.

From bestselling Landmarks author Robert Macfarlane and acclaimed artist and author Jackie Morris, a beautiful collection of poems and illustrations to help readers rediscover the magic of the natural world. In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary -- widely used in schools around the world -- was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these "lost words" included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions -- the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual -- became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world. Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a "spell book" that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book -- a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America.

This charming book revolves around the two journals Bates produced during his groundbreaking travels in the Amazon, and his classic work The Naturalist on the River Amazons. Alongside specially selected excerpts from his book are facsimile reproductions of the pages from his journals demonstrating his talents as an artist as well as a scientist. Bates, a trusted companion of Alfred Russel Wallace, travelled with him to the Amazon in 1848. There he became fascinated by close similarities in appearance between unrelated butterflies. He found that so-called tasty species - those that are sought after by predators - had evolved to look like toxic species to escape being attacked. This idea became known as Batesian mimicry. Bates spent a total of 11 years in the Amazon, exploring the vast network of largely unvisited major rivers and their tributaries, set in the world's largest area of tropical rain forest in South America. By the time he returned to England in 1859, still only 34 years old, Bates had collected, by his own estimate, some 712 species of mammals, reptiles, birds, fishes and molluscs, and about 14,000 species of insects, of which no less than 8,000 were previously unknown.

Floral morphology is key for understanding floral evolution and plant identification. Floral diagrams are two-dimensional representations of flowers that replace extensive descriptions or elaborate drawings to convey information in a clear and unbiased way. Following the same outline as the first edition, this comprehensive guide includes updated and relevant literature, represents the latest phylogeny, and features 28 new diagrams. Diagrams are presented in the context of the most recent classifications, covering a variety of families and illustrating the floral diversity of major groups of plants. A strong didactic tool for observing and understanding floral structures, these diagrams are the obvious counterpart to any genetic study in flowering plants and to the discussion of major adaptations and evolutionary trends of flowers. This book is invaluable for researchers and students working on plant structure, development and systematics, as well as being an important resource for plant ecologists, evolutionary botanists and horticulturists.

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.

Featuring 200 meticulous and anatomically accurate drawings that capture each magnificent owl in multiple poses and from every angle, this reference provides wildlife artists with the tools to draw, paint, sculpt, carve, and study these majestic birds. The comprehensive drawings and color graphs capture the essence of the owls' watchful and predatory nature, and scaled charts allow carvers to create their desired dimensions without sacrificing proportion. With the combination of in-flight and still photographs, everyone from wildlife artists and bird watchers to nature enthusiasts can create these formidable nighttime hunters in minute detail--down to the stripes, speckles, and streaks of their feathers.