4 comments about 4000 Animal, Bird and Fish Motifs: A Sourcebook.

1. My wife asked for this for her birthday. She absolutely loves it. So much so that we recently purchased 6 more as gifts for her friends in different crafting groups. She insists that 4000 Animal, Bird and Fish Motifs has inspired her with tons of quilting/craft ideas. This book is a great gift. We also purchased the other 4000 book of Flowers.
   
   Sam Hendricks, author of "Fantasy Football Guidebook: Your Comrehensive Guide to Playing Fantasy Football" and "Fantasy Football Almanac"



2. This book is amazing. It is very organized and full of various types of animals from different cultures. A lot of them are recognizable and some are new to me. This a book any artist should have.



3. There is, indeed, an encyclopedic amount of creatures in this book, all arranged ark-like by kind; that is, fish are together, birds together, and etc. The images are in black and white making them very usable for a variety of arts and crafts. The images also come from many sources, both historical and geographic. This is a useful collection for artists and a great reference for those interested in the history of image. The only improvement I can think of is in terms of usability: a spiral binding would have been welcome. Recommended.



4. This is an excellent publication for craftspeople, artists and teachers of all artforms. The beautifully presented fauna motifs of all our major art "epochs" will not fail to inspire. I have recommended this book to other artist friends who have also purchased it.

5 comments about An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists.

1. My daughter really liked this book but she wants to be a Veterinarian. Very involved. Excellent book if you want to capture all the nuances of the animals body. A must have for the serious animal artist. It helps to know the correct structure of the animal.



2. I bought this book after a classmate in my 3d organic modeling class brought it in to share. It is great as reference for 3d modeling in maya, zbrush, whatever you are using. That's because it has all kinds of view like side, top, front and even more detail drawings of paws or head. The price is affordable too and the softcover makes it easy to scan and flip.



3. This is an easy book to understand an animal anatomy for people leaning toward the creative side of life and missing some understanding of the scientific part.



4. Not worth the buy: Borrow it or get it at a flea market. First off, it looks like some biology book, nothing artistic about it. The book is filled with old drawings that are probably royalties free anyway. Maybe it's OK as a reference book.
   
   Get Jack Hamm's book instead: More tips and tricks on drawing animals.



5. This is exactly what I needed for doing horse sculptures. A+ Very happy with my purchase. Will also use it for the other animals!

5 comments about Putting People in Your Paintings.

1. Thought this was a wonderful book. Just what I was looking for ie. impressionistic images of figures in watercolour. The demos are clear and easy to follow. Her paintings are full of light and she sets everything out very clearly. More helpful than a DVD. Highly recommended.



2. After years of avoiding attempting to paint figures, I am now able to put people into my paintings successfully. Laurels book is beautifully written and well laid out, which makes it easy to use. She manages to communicate the techniques and instill confidence, so a big thank you!



3. This book is written by a professional portrait painter. She is fabulous in her approach to watercolor portraits but I believe not that helpful to the beginner like myself. The hardest thing to do is to put figures into a landscape or seascape and this book has the information but assumes you are comfortable painting faces and figures in the first place.
   Should you already feel comfortable drawing and painting faces and figures, by all means buy this book.
   The beginner should look elsewhere to realizing the concept and instruction of figure placement.
   There are many videos on the market like Don Andrews - "Painting Figurs in the Landscape" - and Tony Van Hasselt - "Fun with Figures" -that do the job for tyros like us.



4. This book is mainly about watercolor painting. There is a lot of focus on how to simplify the complex, and determining values. It is an absolutely wonderful book to develop skills at value sketches and seeing the light and shadows. It is filled to the brim with valuable information, and it is also filled with stunning artwork by the author.
   The teaching style and organization of the material taught is great.
   
   The author/ artist has a talent for simplifying complex information. She also teaches the reader/ student artist how to take a complex scene that you want to paint and learn the methods of simplifying it. Some of this simplicity is based on exercises of being trained to see light and shadow and values. It is a unique book--I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning to paint. It is not a basic beginner's how-to book, but can be very helpful to all levels of painters--especially in developing better skills at value sketches, and emphasizing light and shadow in your work.
   
   The author's artwork is very inspiring. Her demonstrations are very clear and well-organized. The exercises are exceptionally well-taught, with illustrations that help you understand easily. She teaches you how to take black and white photos of a scene and make value sketches and interpret the light and shadow. The author explains that "figures are patterns of light and shadow". She demonstrates how this light and shadow is then used to put people in paintings, find a center of focus, set mood with color schemes, triads for fleshtones, etc..
   
   I love the author's methods of explaining the painting process: An example is:
   A demonstration on watercolor washes are taught in a simplified way called "watercolor laundry method"--basically, as in household laundry, learning to separate lights and darks, (i.e. painting lights first, letting it dry (hairdryer), then doing the darks. She then demonstrates how a series of washes over each other builds up the shadows and creates light.
   
   This book definitely deserves 5 stars--it is one of the best watercolor teaching books that I own! It simplifies the difficult.



5. The author gives good instruction on how to add figures to watercolor, using her own work as examples. The instructions go from basic palettes to value sketches and show demonstrations.
   
   The author's style is quick and loose. This will seem less intimidating to beginners, who could be easily frustrated when they can't achieve some of the luminous and detailed results of a master.
   
   The author's palette has great suggestions, such as transparent red oxide and yellow oxide, which are transparent versions of palette standards like Venetian Red and Yellow Ochre. But she does recommend alizarin crimson, which today is easily replaced by quinacridone rose or violet and which is less likely to fade. A quibble, but I feel alizarin crimson is better replaced by the quinacridone pigments these days. She shows mixing variation with red-yellow-blue, using manganese blue, but you should be aware this will be manganese hue.
   
   The most valuable part of the book for beginners might be how to do value sketches, using black and white photos or rendering in digital software to see the darks and lights. She shows how dark shadows behind figures can be manipulated to add life and light to the painting--washing in a mix of brighter colors that still have the same value as the deep shadow, but are livelier and more pleasing to the eye.
   
   The best paintings are the ones of Hart's father and his peach orchard. The peaches glow and the shadows on the face and under boxes and barrows are interesting. Her style is not tight and photographic, but it gets the message across beautifully. Any beginner who wants to try portraits and figures can benefit from this book.

2 comments about Color Basics.

1. I am impressed by how much the authors are able to communicate the delights and pleasures of color at the same time as being extremely thorough in explaining terms, concepts, and the relative merits of historical systems. I've never before seen a book that did this. I appreciated their inclusiveness in citing examples from so many fields (painting, photography, sculpture, pop culture, design, fashion and more), and the very specific descriptions that they use to help the reader understand what they are talking about..



2. This is the best book on the subject I've found. I use it all of the time. Should be a required text for all painting classes.

3 comments about Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures.

1. This book is so conspicuosly intelligent, and its exercises in criticism so involving, that it is a great pleasure to read. Baxandall begins by developing a scheme for the explanation of concrete historical objects in general.

   He takes the Forth bridge in Scotland. Baxandall, more than it makes it beautiful, he shows you that it really is beautiful. But wait, there's more. He takes Picasso's Kahweiler and shows it to you as beautiful, and damn well you believe it.

   Baxandall shows us how to interpret art.

   But he claims modesty: he is a historian, he says, and is only offering one method of many to think about pictures. I think this is the only place where he has gone wrong. After going through his method of understanding art, you will know there are no others. All the other ones are wrong. Baxandall is right.

   If you want to be someone who talks about art intelligently, buy this book and you will be able to talk of art in the only way you should




2. This book is a genuinely informative and at times engrossing view into the making and understanding of pictures. However, it reads (not surprisingly) like a textbook; it is brilliant and thought-provoking in some parts but dryly monotonous in others. (The bridge-building bit stands out as particularly tedious.) The points Baxandall makes via this tediousness are no less brilliant, but their lustre is lost beneath layers of dull, yawn-worthy prose. Baxandall's stylistic shortcomings should not scare away anyone with a passionate interest in the study of Art and its interpretation. But for the layman in search of a clear and down-to-earth discussion of how to look at pictures, this is probably a book to avoid.



3. Through three well-chosen case studies, Baxandall examines the question of artistic intention: how the constraints of the culture, the artistic medium, and the intended use of a work of art shape the process of its creation. Particularly penetrating is his "excursus on influence", in which he argues that participants in an artistic tradition shape and change how their predecessors are understood. This is an ingenious and satisfying book: I read it twice for two different college classes, and expect to read it again and continue to profit from it.

5 comments about Color Choices: Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory.

1. This is an excellent book on color, very indepth and very clear. I've learned things from this book that I didn't know. I recommend it to anyone who loves color and uses it in their work or art.



2. Stephen Quiller's books,(I have his book on using Acrylics as well) are definitly the most helpful to me as I am attempting to take up painting again after a long hiatus. His color wheel is fabulous as are his suggestions on mixing results for different pigments, suggestions on setting up one's pallette, what colors are available in various named brands, etc. on and on. All of this information is for water based media, so if that is what you need, it is all here! One may or may not like his style of painting---it is semi-abstract with elements of realism that makes it appear more commercially appealing I suspect, but his color info is dead on! One definitely does not wind up with mud when following his suggestions.



3. Great book presenting a complex theory in understandable fashion! Quiller is an expert in the theory of color.



4. Stephen Quiller is a real master of color harmony. I warmly recommend his book. He teaches not only the color theory, but also demonstrates how it works in practice with his own work. Quiller shows how to mix colors in real life and how to find out the complementaries. His color wheel adds the commercial names of hues that one finds in shops, which is quite handy.
   
   Quiller will teach you not to use the "real" surface color of the objects, but to search for feelings and the atmosphere of the ambient. The leaves may be, say, violet and the sky yellow, if that is how you see them.
   
   One thing Quiller misses to point out is additive color mixing like it was used by pointillists. When colors mix in the eye the rules of harmony are somewhat different.
   
   If you are sceptical about brave color mixtures I recommend you to first have a look at Quiller's art at his internet pages.



5. This book is worth buying for Quiller's color wheel. It is by far the best and most practical I have ever seen. It makes paint mixing very easy. Throw out your color mixing cook books and buy this one.

2 comments about Contemporary Color.

1. This book is packed full of useful information, and is laid out in an easy-to-read interesting way. I actually look forward to reading assignments in the class this textbook is for!



2. I found this to be an ecellent book on the subject of color and it's relationship to the art, graphic, and design world.
   I would have loved to have taken the course which uses this book as their study guide art the Art Institute of Tampa, but they only deal with Degree seeking students.
   You will find it very relative to the use of color in the Art, Graphic, and Design areas, especailly in the practical use of color in the real world.

3 comments about Thomas Kinkade: Masterworks of Light.

1. This book is so beautiful you go crazy over just the Cover! This is a must for art lovers like myself. You would have to be crazy not to like it. The pictures are so peaceful you just get lost in a world of color and light!



2. This is surely one of the best books on the market today if you like scenery pictures. Mr. Kinkade's work is most breathtaking and he is a master at what he does. I highhly recomend this book to all of you.



3. Even if one does not appreciate art, Kinkade's vivid artwork shines through the brilliantly placed pages of his Masterworks of Light.

   Masterworks of Light contains an abundance of Kinkade's popular landscape pictures that come to life within the comforts of one's own home.

   Do not forget to view these images in regular light and dim light as well. You may just find a few surprises to delight you.

No comments about Launching the Imagination 2D + CC CD-ROM v3.0.

5 comments about Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color.

1. Bright Earth is about the long history of paint, not as much as art and painting but of paint itself, and the amazing history people have with visual art.
   
   Focusing on the machanics of paint, where the pigments came from, possible ways people discovered paint, and how different pigments interact with their binders, this is a very intersting and informative book on the technical aspects of visual art, but the book is more.
   
   It deals also with the historic aspect of color and how cultural precepts influence our perception of color and color theory. How our cultural baggage influences how we see color and our reactions to it.



2. It is not easy to classify this book, I would not say it is a science book, what the title "the invention of colour" would suggest, nor an art history. It is more a history of dyes and pigments and how they were used by artists of different ages.
   
   It explains how the availability of materials shaped the artists' palette and how the artists of different periods chose among the available pigments to create and shape their own colour style. Avant garde painters took advantage of the discovery of new pigments (sometimes in detriment of durability and stability) in order to create new styles and art movements, that gradually became mainstream.
   
   Chapter 2: "Plucking the rainbow. The physics and chemistry of colour" is brilliant, clear and comprehensible, as are all approaches to science topics by Mr. Ball.
   
   The book contains very detailed descriptions and "recipes" of how pigments were obtained in alchemists or craftsmen laboratories, quoting the original "magic" texts, craftsmen manuals or art treatises of the time, instead of using chemical formulas, but Ball briefly explains the minerals or chemical compounds and the chemical reactions that took place in the "cauldrons" to produce certain hues.
   
   Ball uses the original names of the pigments or colours throughout the book, like "vermilion", "ultramarine", "azurite", "indigo", "orpiment", to name a few. Since they were used to name a colour, a substance or both, sometimes the same substance gave origin to two different colours, creating a lot of confusion. At times, this read like a soup of ingredients to me. Although this does not affect the readability of the book, I find it difficult to remember all these words. If it should serve as a reference, an Appendix, listing the dyes, minerals or substances from which it was obtained, formula, period or artist that used it most, etc. or a "coloured" timeline would be more useful.
   
   Would this book have been written by somebody different than Phillip Ball, it would most probably be very boring. Mr. Ball definitely knows how to write, since the book is quite easy to read, despite the extravagant display of factual details.



3. Colour is easy to take as grant. However, the great painters of the history worked often with a very limited palettes, as good pigments simply weren't invented. The best blues and reds were very valuable, which defined the ways they were used in medieval painting. There's plenty of detail in the history of art that can be explained by the economics and chemistry of paint.
   
   Philip Ball is a chemist and painters will learn a lot of chemistry from this book. Chemists will learn about art and painting and curious reader will learn both. The book is clearly written, entertaining and educational: an excellent example of good popular science. There are plenty of interesting details, as Ball goes through the history of art and pigments from the stone age cave paintings to modern art. (Review based on the Finnish translation.)



4. Bright Earth gives a detailed history of the development of colour as used in art (painting primarily). It is well written and easy to read but perhaps tends a little towards being a pedantic. Nevertheless it is very helpful in understanding colour and its use in art through the ages.



5. excellent service book is very deep and scientific, but i waded through it.