Elisabetta Sirani of Bologna (1638-1665) was one of the most innovative and prolific artists of the Bolognese School. Not only a painter, she was also a printmaker and a teacher. Based on extensive archival documentation and primary sources — including inventories, sale catalogues and her work diary — Elisabetta Sirani provides an overview of the life, work, critical fortune and legacy of this successful Baroque artist. Placing her within the context of the post-Tridentine society that both inhibited and supported her, Modesti examines Sirani's influence on many of the artists studying at Bologna's school for professional women artists, as well as her significance in the professionalisation of women’s artistic practice in the seventeenth century. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Elisabetta Sirani focuses on women’s agency. More specifically, it explores Sirani’s identity as both a woman and an artist, including her professional ambition, self-fashioning and literary construction as Bologna’s pre-eminent cultural heroine.

Master watercolour techniques with this indispensable artist's manual.

Whether you are just starting with watercolour painting or you’re looking to push yourself and try new ideas, Artist's Watercolour Techniques is for you. Learn how to work with a variety of water-based media and discover a range of subject matter from landscapes and urban scenes to botanical paintings and portraits with detailed advice for all levels.

Fully illustrated, step-by-step workshops from professional artists guide you through more than 90 watercolour techniques, including creating a wash, alla prima, glazing, and working in monochrome. All techniques are accompanied by inspiring exercises and projects to try at home to help you develop your skills, discover your style, and grow as an artist.

Whatever your level of expertise, this all-encompassing guide will teach you everything you need to take your art to the next level.

Bouleau's classic illustrated work examines the essential reliance of European painting tradition on the golden mean and other geometrical patterns. From antiquity to the present, expert painters-including abstract modern masters such as Paul Klee and Jackson Pollock-have conveyed harmony through the mathematics of spatial division, ultimately giving geometry a crucial role as the foundation upon which these classics were built. For over half a century, "The Painter's Secret Geometry" has been a seminal work for students of art history and composition. Now this popular, rich analysis is back in print for today's artists and historians.

Abstract landscape painting expresses emotion while still capturing the essence of a landscape. This compelling book explores this suggestive style first developed by Turner. Using the hauntingly-beautiful paintings of Gareth Edwards, it explores the technical, historical and psychological dimensions of abstract landscape painting to help you develop your own skilful and intensely personal approach. Through this new book you can learn about how to begin an abstract landscape painting, using chance application; understand how to 'manage accidents' to create innovative pieces of work; discover the importance of effective composition and how this navigates the viewer's journey; determine the importance of the 'invisible' elements of painting: the unspoken value of the viewer and the influence of 'looking'. It also reveals how to utilize a convergence of linear and atmospheric perspective to help your viewer traverse the picture plane and helps you understand the importance of light, space, colour, and tone in generating evocative paintings. Finally, it encourages you to be more demanding of your surface, using textural techniques and glazing to achieve professional production values. It is a unique and exciting book into this under-documented genre.

Originally a film by British avant-garde filmmaker Nichola Bruce, The Romance of Bricks is a portrait of the artist Liz Finch: a British painter, performer and poet. From her life-changing accident and rural solitude to the mad social whirl of 80s London anarchic performances and up to the present day, The Romance of Bricks sews together archival film over many years to produce an intriguing glimpse into the private world of the artist. Featuring commentary from Jools Holland, Christine Binnie, Jennifer Binnie, John Finch, Brian Clarke, Aubrey Fabing, Richard Strange, Nicola Bateman Bowery, Francesco Brusatin and Martin Harrison alongside an intimate dialogue with the artist herself.

This title leads readers through a series of watercolour technique exercises designed to provide basic grounding in the skills needed for paintings flowers in watercolours. Projects include painting: a single flower, a close-up outdoors, wild flowers in the landscape and more.

Sketchbook Secrets takes the reader into the heart of Moira Huntly's art, showing how she captures images and occasions in her sketchbook, and how she then takes those ideas through to finished paintings. This is a unique opportunity to see the progression of a painting, from field sketch to finished artwork. Throughout the book Moira provides useful insights and tips, showing how artists can make the most creative use of sketches and sketchbooks. Many of the sketches were made on location all over the world; Moira demonstrates the essentials of field sketching and shows how she develops an idea from these sketches. The book is also peppered with delightful anecdotes as Moira tells the stories behind the sketches. Sketchbook Secrets is a book to look at and learn from, and its beautiful pictures will bring readers back time and time again.

The walls of medieval churches were brightly painted with religious imagery and colourful patterns, and although often shadows of their former selves, these paintings are among the most enigmatic art to survive the Middle Ages. This beautifully illustrated book is an ideal introduction to this fascinating subject. It tells the stories behind the paintings and explains their purpose, the subjects they showed, how they were made and by whom, and what happened to these works of art during and after the enormous upheavals of the Reformation. It also compares and contrasts religious and domestic wall paintings and explores modern approaches to their conservation and care. A comprehensive gazetteer provides an invaluable guide to where the best British examples can be seen. Roger Rosewell is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a leading expert on medieval wall paintings. He is also the Features Editor of Vidimus, the online magazine about medieval stained glass and a professional lecturer and photographer. Educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, he has also written Stained Glass and The Medieval Monastery for Shire.

"I can't control the paint." "It's not colorful enough." "It's intimidating!" With the fun and easy techniques in Gina Rossi Armfield's No Excuses Watercolor, your excuses for not painting with watercolor don't stand a chance! As you try the demonstrations and exercises, you'll learn the techniques and tricks necessary to achieve amazing, colorful results in your artist's sketchbook. After getting to know your materials, you'll try your hand at thirteen exercises that will help train your hand, and help you identify and refine your artistic style. Along the way, you'll get tips and suggestions for adding journaling and writing to your art. Finally, you'll find an inspirational resource guide packed with reference photos, starter sketches, color palettes, journaling prompts and more to help you fill your watercolor journal! Grab your sketchbook and watercolors--it's time to paint, no excuses! 22 demonstrations for sketching and watercolor painting. 13 exercises for practicing backgrounds, focal images, color mixing, layering and details. 13 resource sections loaded with journaling and painting prompts to keep you inspired.

Fidelia Bridges (1834-1923) painted pictures that critics praised for their ability to exude the fragrance of field flowers and glow with the plumage of birds. Raised in Salem and long residing in Connecticut, she maintained a studio in New York City, where she exhibited her art for over forty years at the National Academy, American Watercolor Society and other prestigious venues. Transforming flower painting from a domestic outlet for female amateurs to a marketable commodity for professionals, she never wavered in her conviction that women had the right to shape independent careers on their own terms. She delineated both cultivated flowers and clumps of weeds with an intensity of focus unmatched by any other artist of her era. Often, she combined plants with local birds to convey a sophisticated understanding of their environmental interaction that encouraged others to appreciate and conserve nature. She made an extended European tour in the 1860s and regular trips to Great Britain in later years but preferred home nature. Assembling a cross-section of her stunning oil paintings, watercolours, chromolithographs and illustrated volumes for the first time, and analysing them against letters, diaries and periodical reviews, Fidelia Bridges combines a recovery of the artist's biography with close readings of her artworks. Living an outwardly conventional life, she embraced the bicycle and later the automobile as vehicles of female liberation, cultivated her garden with the skill of a horticulturalist, and left a lasting pictorial legacy to be found in US public museums and private collections nationwide.

Gain insight into methods of the best contemporary acrylic artists in the 3rd edition of AcrylicWorks. Features more than 125 paintings by about 100 artists selected from hundreds of acrylic painters across the world invited to submit work for consideration. Each painting is accompanied by a caption that offers instructive information that discusses the artist's radical breakthrough in the painting process. Entry fee of $25 for first image and $20 each additional entry helps defer cost of production. The 1st annual AcrylicWorks brought in $25,233 in fees, and AcrylicWorks 2 brought in $24,032 in fees. Call for entries promoted in consumer mailings, The Artist's Magazine, www.artistsnetwork.com and http://wetcanvas.com.

John James Audubon is arguably America's most widely recognized and collected artist. His Birds of America has been reproduced often, beginning with the double elephant folio printed by Havill in England, followed by a much smaller "Octavo" edition printed in Philadelphia and sold by subscription. After Audubon's death, his family arranged with the New York printer Julius Bien to produce another elephant folio edition, this time by the new chromolithographic process. It too would be sold by subscription, but the venture, begun in 1858, was brought to an abrupt end by the Civil War. Only 150 plates were produced, and the number remaining today is slight; they are among the rarest and most sought after Audubon prints. Bound in cloth with a full cloth slipcase, this beautifully produced book is the first complete reproduction of Bien chromolithographs and will become the centerpiece of any bird lover's library.

Eileen Cooper OBE RA has been consistently successful across her 50-year career, the influence of her art seen in the range and depth of her work as well as in her contribution to art education. Cooper's artistic experiences - which, in the words of Linsey Young, disrupt the neat patriarchal understandings of women - are brought together in this thoughtfully designed and elegant hardback. Early works are illustrated alongside previously unseen drawings, paintings, prints, ceramics and portraits, many of which will surprise readers. The authors also consider Cooper's work in relation to the collections of Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, including works by Peter Doig, Paula Rego, Pablo Picasso, Dame Laura Knight and Lotte Laserstein.

Ateliers have produced the greatest artists of all time - and now that educational model is experiencing a renaissance. These studios, a return to classical art training, are based on the nineteenth-century model of teaching artists by pairing them with a master artist over a period of years. Students begin by copying masterworks, then gradually progress to painting as their skills develop. On every page, Aristides uses the works of works of Old Masters and today's most respected realist artists to demonstrate and teach the principles of realist drawing and painting, taking students step by step through the learning curve yet allowing them to work at their own pace. Unique and inspiring, Classical Drawing Atelier is a serious art course for serious art students.

Sold in packs of 6. Gorgeous, foiled, handmade greeting cards, blank inside and shrink-wrapped with a gold envelope. Themed with our art calendars, foiled notebooks and illustrated art books. Our greeting cards are printed on FSC paper and wrapped in biodegradeable cello bag, and are themed with our art calendars, foiled notebooks and illustrated art books. This example features one of Vincent van Gogh's most famous paintings, Starry Night Over the Rhone. In a letter to his sister Wilhemina, Van Gogh wrote: 'Often it seems to me night is even more richly coloured than day.' In this night painting, the sky is Prussian blue, ultramarine and cobalt, with sparkling yellow gaslights and stars. The spot depicted is in Arles, close to the Yellow House he famously rented.

Be enchanted by the power and beauty of the natural world with this stunning colouring book, filled with 46 intricate illustrations by ink artist Stratten Peterson. From the courageous bear, a symbol of strength and healing, to the inquisitive deer, a manifestation of inner wisdom, discover how animals have long inspired spirituality, mythology and one's connection with nature. Through insightful text, this book invites you to explore the significance of each mystic animal, then immerse yourself in the extraordinary artworks as you bring them to life with colour. Mystic Animals is brought to you by the publisher of the bestselling Kerby Rosanes colouring book series.