2 comments about Nature and Its Symbols (Guide to Imagery Series).

1. I was disappointed in this book because the format is too small to do the art justice. Such a beautiful book with wonderful information should have been published in a larger format. Difficult to see the detail.



2. In "Guide to imagery series" books I found the books on art
   that give an exceptionally clear presentation of the subject.
   I bought 6 books ("Nature and Its Symbols" among them)
   and I really found what I was searching for. You can study Old and
   New Testament as well as ancient mythology reading these books,
   understand the role of different details, symbols drawn on each picture. Inside each book there is a short description of the specific topic followed by full-colour reproductions of the pictures on this topic from different museums all over the world with detailed explanations to each picture. It was amazing to find and understand the meaning of different pictures I saw in art galleries in St.Petersburg, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Venice, Naples and other places. Really a great selection of art works is presented in each of these books. I strongly recommend all these books to everybody who wants to understand the meaning of the pictures and get a nice art collection at home.

5 comments about Draw 50 Cats: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Domestic Breeds, Wild Cats, Cuddly Kittens, and Famous Felines.

1. I have a very artistic child and another child who isn't quite as artistic. Both love this book and others from the "Draw 50" series. The one has a blast changing little things and making the pictures his own and the other has fun realizing that she too can create some cool pictures with the easy to follow instructions. This particular book has some wonderful cats featured from your common tabby to more unique household cats and large wild kitties. It's definitely worth the money.



2. I wanted to draw more realistic cats
   and this book showed me that I needed to start with the head shape
   and not the ears. There was not a lot of writing, just good step-by-step instruction. From my first drawing with this book, my drawings have improved. I highly reccomend this book!



3. This is the best drawing book I have gotten to date. It gives detailed instruction. Almost immediatley I was able to draw realistic looking cats. Using the techniques in the book I was able to expand and draw other animals as well.



4. I am teaching my students to draw cats using this book. I like the step-by-step drawings and the different position and types of cats.
   We have gone one step further in class by making our own stationery and cards using our finished drawings. We add a complimentary quote to our drawing from the book 516 Sensational Cat Quotes, Proverbs, Quips and Jokes for Scrapbooking, Crafting and Fun ISBN 0966640578
   Teachers, have your student make a copy of the original so that they can make numerous copies. Save the originals.
   Great drawing book. I highly recommend it.
   We are having fun in class.



5. My daughter borrowed some of these books from the school library & loved them so much i bought some for her. It goes step by step with you,giving examples,to show you how to make wonderful drawings.Great book for anyone who likes to draw.

3 comments about The Second Anti-Coloring Book: Creative Activites for Ages 6 and Up (Anti-Coloring Book).

1. These coloring books are really fun - outside the box. My son was 4.5 when we started one. I made comments on each page to remember what everything that he drew meant and also included his comments. Its neat to look back and see how his interests and mind is changing. I highly recommend this series.



2. This is a wonderful book for teachers. I like to use this book with my students because it lets them be creative and stretch their imagination.
   I would recommend this book to any teacher who teaches grades K-6th.



3. I just love all of the books in this series by Susan Striker (with Edward Kimmel on a few of them). In college I learned about how coloring books are actually somewhat damaging to a child's creativity. When you give a child a coloring book, you aren't asking him to think or create - just kill time. But when you just give him inspiration in the form of these books, you're telling him that his imagination is important, and that you have faith in his abilities to draw and create.
   
   Completing these pages doesn't only take imagination, either. Problem-solving skills are employed as children answer the questions posed on each page through their illustrations.
   
   To children, none of this matters of course. For anyone who has ever laid down a blank piece of paper and wondered what they should draw, this is a welcome source of interesting ideas.
   
   As a mother, I have used these books several times, and every time I get them out and let my kids look through them, they immediately become excited by the many possibilities and always find it difficult to narrow down which ones they will do. Furthermore, there is such a range of topics that any child is just about guaranteed to find something of interest. On one page, the creator is challenged to "Award Yourself a medal for what you know you do best", then on another page he or she is asked to "Construct a city on another planet" or illustrate, "What is your idea of Paradise?". All of these prompts also include some background to help get creative juices flowing.
   
   I should also note that many of the prompts in the book can also easily lend themselves to be used as creative writing prompts. I highly recommend this or any book in this series to any teacher or parent.

2 comments about Posada's Popular Mexican Prints.

1. Posada is known mainly by its illustrations of the death, in this book appears all its work and the illustrations of the death are only a 10% of the book, the others are illustrations of the daily life, critical policy and customs of the Mexico Posada's time.
   
   The quality of the paper and the encuadernación are not very luxurious, but he is agreed with the price.
   
   
   In Spanish:
   Posada es conocido principalmente por sus ilustraciones de la muerte, en este libro aparece toda su obra y las ilustraciones de la muerte son solo un 10% del libro, las demás son ilustraciones de la vida cotidiana, crítica política y costumbres de el México de la época de posada.
   
   La calidad del papel y la encuadernación no son muy lujosas, pero es acorde con el precio.



2. The book is a comprehensive review of Posada's prints. The biographical information is straight forward and well informed.

No comments about A Dictionary of Modern Design (Oxford Paperback Reference).

3 comments about Formless: A User's Guide.

1. Georges Bataille was a provocative thinker. Associated freely with the Surrealists, playing around with the fascists, Gnostics, psychoanalysis and eroticism, he managed to create a highly explosive cultural blend which proves influential in our times, like a real time-bomb should. Was he really that quasi-Postmodern thinker some interpreters try to make him look? Anyway, he wrote some of the most intellectually challenging texts and supplied exquisitely enjoyable concepts which present-day artists still can not truly exhaust. The book "Formless" provides an equally provocative reading of Bataille projected against some Modern and Postmodern artifacts, which the French thinker never really saw. It is anachronistic, it is puzzling, sometimes quite enjoyable. Problem is, it does not add to our understanding of neither Bataille, nor, for example, Andy Warhol. It shows that Rosalind Krauss and Yve-Alain Bois can write complicated and intricate pieces on virtually anything, citing from Bataille and/or the so-called "French theory" to interesting effect. But this is not an art history book, it is rather a kind of artifact of its own right. Personally I do not regret that I bought it, but I can imagine people who would be disappointed.
   I think in Thomas Pynchon's "V" there is a passage where two thugs planning to steal Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" from the Uffizi go to the museum and stare at the painting. They see a nude woman, a maid who is trying to cover her up with a cloak, and an excited male god at the left who is trying hard to blow the cloak away and keep Venus nude. Well, this does not add to our understanding of Botticelli, but provides amusing reading and serves Pynchon's point nicely. Something similar happens with "Formless": it is entertaining but tells us mostly about personal excitements and idiocyncrazies of the two intellegent people who wrote this collection.



2. One should re-name this book: Useless - a Form Guide.



3. This book claims to introduce a whole new perspective of 20th- century art which has so far been repressed. We are led to believe that it is necessary to add a third and foreign element into the conceptualization of art. The basis on which this whole endeavour is anchorred is the philosophical "Informe" of Georges Bataille. However, the arguments presented by the authors are weak as the whole book is stuffed with analyses purporting to reveal the operational tool of "informe". Any attempt at explaining the original intentions of Bataille's "informe" is so brief and convenient so as to get the reader lost in its adjectival superfluity. There is never any attempt to explain the introduction of "informe" into art and its necessity. The authors make claims to be liberating our thinking from the semantic and that this project is only the beginning. I am only too happy to wish for a clearer and thoroughly convincing argument the next ti! me.

5 comments about How to Draw Fantasy Females: Create Sexy Cyberpunks, Seductive Supergirls, and Raunchy All-Action Heroines.

1. I tend to buy a lot of "How to Draw" books, art books, etc. and, over the years, I've developeda pretty good sense of what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, "How to Draw Fantasy Females" just doesn't work.
   
   This book is basically a look into different kinds of female sci-fi/comic book/fantasy characters. It gives information on archetypes (actually, there is a little character sheet-type list at the beginning of the book that will help you design different character "types") and provides a couple of pseudo-helpful tutorials on Photoshop and other programs, but is mostly a showcase of different kinds of femals genre characters. I was underwhelmed, to tell the truth - there is very little "how to" to this book at all. Unless you are a collector or a completionist, I recommend just staying away from this one and looking elsewhere.



2. this book talks about the type of characters there are in stories and what not. And if you plan on drawing fantasy stuff, chances are you already know about these character types. Theres plenty left out and this doesnt teah you much if you know how to draw and if you dont know how to draw, this doesnt teach you how.
   
   I got this thinking it'd show me how to draw suits and armor and stuff for females, not tell me that i could draw a girl with a gun or a female alien shaped like a uterus (im dead serious), whats up with that?
   
   If i knew what i know now about this book, I wouldnt buy it. I can't really say who this book would be useful for. I guess its for those who want to draw fantasy style, but have no idea what kind of fantasy settings exsist. And with all the movies, cartoons, videogames, and comic books out there, i dont thing such a person walks this earth.
   
   I wouldnt call it a waste, it does have some nice artwork in it, but overall its useless for me. I'm not an expert or draw for a living or anything like that and im not new at it. This would have been useful if it tought you how to draw stuff or at least had more/unheard of archetypes. Another thing is that this book does is assumes you want to make a comic book which gets annoying because it gives story ideas instead telling me what i wanted to learn.



3. This book isn't worth the paper it's written on. There's next to nothing useful in it, any other drawing book on the market is far better. I'm amazed a publisher released it.



4. Overall, besides the 'cheesecake' appeal, the breakdown of styles and techniques justify buying this book. I haven't yet, but I might.
   
   I reccomend anyone using this as a learning tool also get a DVD/Digital cable and once in a while use the 'pause' feature, to sketch what they see on the TV. Have a sketchbook devoted to 'life drawing' from this source, seperate from the 'fantasy' stuff. Also, "Drawing and painting fantasy figures" should be purchased first, as more versatile, along with its companion on "Fantasy Worlds".
   
   
   Poser, mentioned heavily in this book, is also a very good tool. Ever see a movie called "Fire and Ice"? It was done with a "Rotoscope" where artists drew over still frames from a movie that used actors approximating what the animation would be. Today, with Poser and some decent software, such as flash and painter, such a movie could be made far more easily. One of my projects once I think of a good "Thud and Blunder" plot to tribute to Heroic fantasy;-)
   
   I use TrueSpace for more ambitious 3D, but for general figure position experiments, Poser works good. Got a copy of Poser 5 here, and it works great. Previously, I'd used Poser 3, which I got for free in a magazine, but when I got a computer with more than a Gig of Ram, Poser 3 couldn't recognize it.



5. Drop the How to Draw from the title and you will get what you are paying for. This book covers software and tools used in the profession but lacks any step by steps useful to beginners and contains info already known by anyone with basic knowledge of character design. This book is more of a gallery of created characters.

5 comments about Web Design Flash Sites (Icons).

1. it's a decent book with some decent examples of websites and web design. definitely a bit out-dated since some of the websites described are no longer working and the info is well... informational in terms of a brief history and such with flash but that's about it. if it had more examples (good examples) of web design with flash as the title suggests, then maybe i would've given more stars. otherwise, this book is barely mediocre.



2. I think is basic but you get a good reference for your money
   it could be better, but maybe the next time



3. Great book and a nice compact format. Not a lot of text but visuals are why you would buy this book.



4. The Taschen's Icons Web design collection, (4) as far as I know and own (I hope they'll release more), is a helpful tool for designer who wants to see the growing world of the fully detailed sites.
   
   if you want to see and check not only the best but the lines of design and the progress of the entertainment evolution in user's interactive experience, you just have to check them.
   
   they are divided in types, products and function.
   
   the quality of the images are the best. printed in glasse in glossy ink. fancy for collectors.



5. I just received this book today in the mail and have to say that I am sorely disappointed! The book is smaller than I had anticipated - about 5 1/2" x 7 3/4". When I opened the book, I was very dismayed to find that I could not read it. Many of the pages are written in a foreign language, but more than that, the print is so tiny that a magnifying glass is necessary to be able to ready anything other than page titles.
   
   To be fair, the book is filled with images of various web pages. However, without being able to read the text, I'm not sure the pictures alone are helpful!
   
   Again, I am highly disappointed. This is the first book I've purchased that I've been this unhappy with.

2 comments about The Flash Companion.

1. This book is filled with detailed historical essays on each of the four "main" Flashes (and the Rogues) as well as interviews and bios on many of the creators to work on the character through the years. However, the editing is lackadaisical to say the least and for a cover price of $27, I was disappointed that not one of the 220 pages featured color illustrations. Grab it with the discount.



2. Packed with interesting info that any speedster fanatic would like to know. Could have been a little more comprehesive, but overall very good.

2 comments about Jasper Johns: Gray (Art Institute of Chicago).

1. I hesitated before ordering this book. I already own 5 books about Jasper Johns and was thinking to myself that owning one more would not add much to my appreciation of this great artist. I was wrong. This book, the catalogue for an exhibition held at the Chicago Art Institute in 2007, is full of marvelous illustrations (of some recent works like the Catenary series) and brilliant essays on the importance of this most difficult of colors, gray, in the work of Johns. The quality of the illustrations is such that they enable the reader to see all the nuances of the artist's palette as if we were standing in front of the paintings (or drawings, or prints, as a matter of fact). In this respect, all the photographs were taken by the same photographer using one type of material only so as to show the works in the same light and shade. Johns's gray is like Hals's black: he has hundreds of different grays and the book reveals this perfectly.
   
   Highly recommended.



2. I have found this book most helpful. The articles written by the various contributors is worth the price alone. The illustrations are satisfactory as most of these works are about texture.This book will be a friend for a long time.