5 comments about Illustrating Nature: Right-Brain Art in a Left-Brain World.

1. Haven't had a chance to really study the book, but from glancing through it there's a lot to be learned. I got to mainly for the pen and ink drawings which are excellent. However, I never really did understand the right side and left side of the brain when it comes to art. Maybe this will help.



2. I had been wanting to order this book, but for one reason or another kept post-poning. I'm glad I finally ordered it. It is wonderful, inspiring and for any level.



3. I've looked at a lot of art instruction books, wondering if they'd perform
   as promised. This profusely illustrated book is the best I've seen!
   The first thing you notice when you leaf through Illustrating Nature ~
   Right-brain Art in a Left-brain World is that Irene Brady has skillfully
   constructed exercises to lead you by the hand at your own pace down her
   well-marked trail to professional illustration. For instance, the book begins by
   explaining that artistic skills are natural to most of us and that to open
   the door all you need is the key - then she hands you the key.
   Starting with right-brain exercises to help you access your creative
   skills, she then shows you how to really look at things, noticing and
   comparing shapes and angles. The next step is to convey that information to
   your hand and the paper - and amazingly, out comes a picture you'll be
   amazed you could create. While beginners can get started with this book,
   all artists can jump in at their own skill level and proceed from there to
   a stage of excellence they've only dreamed of. There are exercises to
   advance the artist's skill in such different areas as shading; use of
   pencil, pen, and computer; organizing and designing an illustration; field
   sketching (and taking notes about the subject); and a multitude of procedures and tips, both large and small, that go into creating beautiful, professional
   results. The heavily illustrated instructions for each exercise are clear,
   concise, and lead the artist from elemental to complex in easy increments.
   The appendix outlines steps to guide your art into a career in a wide array
   of professional fields.
   If you've ever thought you might like to jumpstart, improve, or hone your
   artistic skills to a fine point, this book is an excellent choice.



4. Irene Brady is an expert, biologically accurate nature artist, but that doesn't stop her from creating (and teaching others to create) lively, interesting nature art. I am very impressed by her book, Illustrating Nature, Right-brain Art in a Left-brain World. From the construction of a leaf or a wing to the hairs in an ear and the fur on the body, Brady leads you to analyze the structure of plant or animal parts. Then she skillfully helps you understand techniques to illustrate these features. You learn how to pay attention to the details and illustrate the entire organism in a realistic and delightful manner. Brady wisely encourages the developing artist to use computer graphics as part of their toolkit. She also provides an appendix with many design ideas for book and magazine layout and design and promotional graphics, brochures and the like for museums and nature centers. This is a superb book for classroom use and the individual learner. I would have given my eyeteeth for this book as a child. Maybe there is hope for me yet!
   
   Nancy Field
   Nature Publisher, Author and Wildlife Biologist
   Dog-Eared Publications
   Author of several titles, including Discovering Sharks and Rays, the winner of a 2004 Ben Franklin Award for Best Juvenile-Young Adult Nonfiction



5. Rebeccasreads highly recommends ILLUSTRATING NATURE as an important tool for every budding artist (no matter their age) with an eye for a career in illustration, scientific or otherwise, as well as an extraordinary assistance for elders wanting to keep their brains in tip-top shape!
   
   If you're a bit confused by all this Left Brain/Right Brain stuff, then Irene Brady ably guides you in discovering just what your Left Brain does, & what your magical Right Brain can do. Amazing stuff, folks!
   
   ILLUSTRATING NATURE is a superbly inter-active book -- you are in for an adventure in creating fascinating, realistic images.
   
   ILLUSTRATING NATURE is a textbook you will keep coming back to, as your skill progresses - highly recommended for home schooling, elder art classes & anyone of any age who loves to draw.

No comments about The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema.

2 comments about 1,000 Icons, Symbols, and Pictograms: Visual Communications for Every Language (1000 Series).

1. The 1000 series is good pictorial reference however if you're looking for
   written content this is not the book for you. There are two opening paragraphs and
   that is it. I expected more informed content.



2. Typically, I'm very hard to impress when it comes to books. However, this book really made me raise my eyebrows (in a good way) and gave me a lot of inspiration as it relates to visual queues and labeling. I think this book, and really, any book published by Rockport Publishers is decent to look into purchasing. In addition to this book, I highly recommend reviewing the RockPort book entitled "Universal Principles of Design" by William Tidwell.

1 comments about Storyboard Design Course: Principles, Practice, and Techniques.

1. If you are a novice artist approaching storyboarding for the first time, or a long-run professional, you will benefit greatly from this book.
   Giuseppe's international experience and intuitions flow from this book to the reader with humor and elegance. I enjoyed very much reading this book, and my skills and knowledge of storyboarding increased. I also added an interesting point of view to my approach to film making.
   I warmly reccomend this book to anybody who works in storyboarding, but also to film-makers and communication professionals.
   thumbs up for Giuseppe

5 comments about How to Draw Cars the Hot Wheels Way.

1. I bought this book solely because Scott Robertson wrote it. Normally I would have passed this book by thinking it was a children's book on drawing hotwheels. Boy was I surprised when I received it.
   
   This is not as much a book on drawing cars but a book explaining how to use perspective when drawing vehicles which could be used for all types of vehicles. I've read many books on perspective and this one has been the most well developed instruction on vehicle perspective. His instructions are very detailed with great illustrations for each step. And we're not talking about glossed over quick 3 step instructions, most instructions are over 10 steps. So he goes slow with enough detail to not miss anything necessary to truly understand this topic.
   
   Another bonus, is that he explains in detail how to render with various art media and also step by step how to render in Photoshop. These instructions are as detailed as that for drawing in perspective.
   
   This book was a Great Surprise! I wish I had found it earlier. I probably could have forgone many books for what I've found in this one. Don't let the name fool you, pick this book up no matter what level of artist, illustrator, cartoonist or designer you are. Great book!!! 5 Stars.



2. Purchased for a 7.75 year old boy who loves to draw. He likes it but not as well as the drawing book by Hart.



3. Great Value - My son just keeps using this. For the enjoyment he receives from this guide, it is worth twice as much to me.



4. this book is probably one of the best books on drawing cars. lots of great pictures. and really great art of street rod cars. much better than How to Draw Cars like a Pro. everything you'll need on drawing cars is in here!



5. The minute this book arrived and I saw how great it was I realized that I would need to give it as a gift to a designer friend. Then I needed to order another copy to keep for myself. If you are a designer, want to draw cars, or are just a fan of Hot Wheels cars, Scott Robertson's book is a wonderful insight into the world of unlimited transportation imagination. Kids of ALL AGES would love this book!

3 comments about The Eames Lounge Chair: An Icon of Modern Design.

1. Recently we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Eames Lounge Chair and what better tribute to that milestone than this commemorative book. I have it and I love t. There is also a poster of the cover that you must get too.
   
   Hats off to Herman Milller for keeping the Eames style relevant and as fresh as ever!



2. A great resource for anyone that has one of these iconic chairs or is interested in its history.



3. At last a book about THAT chair. Thomas Hine, one of the contributors to this interesting book, writes a chapter about the way the chair kept popping up in all the right media and this probably helped it along to its iconic status. I was aware of the chair many years ago and kept seeing it in interior design photos, adverts, and anywhere that visually needed to project an upmarket ambience. Strangely I never saw anyone sitting in these chairs and I was surprised to find, when I bought one, that the back does not support one's head. A 1956 photo used in a Herman Miller ad shows a stockbroker friend of Charles Eames clearly with his head on the back, he was either a short guy or had moved well forward in the chair.
   
   The book is a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the chair by five contributors with over two hundred illustrations. I thought Pat Kirkham's chapter on the chair's development the most interesting. There is a 1946 photo of a chair that is clearly a prototype for the final 1956 version. Another photo, from 1950 shows Billy Wilder sitting in this '46 version. Although Charles Eames designed the chair there was a huge technical input from Don Albinson who worked in the Eames Office.
   
   The book is a handsome production, well thought out editorially and nicely designed and printed though there is a bit of unnecessary design whimsy with the chapter titled 'The Lounge Chair: idea to icon'. It has seventy-seven pages of photos and graphics with no page numbers, the captions are on three following pages where the illustrations are repeated as thumbnails with the relevant text, in fact the seventy-seven pages had enough space for these captions. Also I would have liked to have seen a technical drawing of the chair and ottoman with dimensions.
   
   Despite a rather high list price I thought this book was a super reminder of a brilliant example of product design. The chair's status is surely growing because by 2004 over one hundred thousand had been sold and that most likely includes mine.
   
   ***FOR AN LOOK INSIDE click 'customer images' under the cover.
   
   

5 comments about Color Harmony: A Guide to Creative Color Combinations.

1. Overwhelmed with color combos, but not effective guidelines for combining.



2. The primary target audience for this books seems to have been Japanese, with Westerners as an afterthought.
   
   The books does contain hundreds of color combinations, but throughout the book the 61 colors used to form different combinations are identified according to the Dai Nippon Inc Color (DIC) System.
   
   The book also contains swatches in 61 colors, which you can cut out with scissors, and which are on the back also identified according to DIC system.
   
   At the end of the book there is a conversion chart, where you can find what color in DIC system correspondes to what color in CMYK, but it is way less convenient that using color combination books like Color Harmony Workbook by Lisa Sawahata, which I have found to be infinitely better and much more practical and user-friendly for Westerners.



3. This book has some decent information, but using the colors in the book is made ridiculously difficult by the color chart at the end of the book. First, if a value is a zero, they put nothing at all. This makes it difficult for your eye to trace the line of numbers for your color. Second, though the colors are given in CMYK, they are given in the order YMCK. This means to enter the color into Photoshop or another image program, you have to start with the third number, read back to the first, then jump to the last. It's not brain surgery, but much more difficult than it should be.



4. This book is a great tool for finding color combinations. It contains small samples of 2, 3, and 4-color combinations. At the bottom of each combination page is a tip for using colors together. My only quibble is that the samples are VERY small, probably because the footprint of the book is also small.
   
   Recommended for getting ideas on color.



5. Book came in good condition about two weeks after order.

4 comments about The Social Psychology of Clothing: Symbolic Appearances in Context.

1. By far the most comprehensive, clear, and intellectually stimulating book on this subject matter. Very inspiring! I would highly recommend this book.



2. Do not be misled by the title of the book. This book belongs to the genre of Cultural Studies, not Social Psychology.
   
   Regadless of the thick size, the book has little content. It is full of grandiose and theory-ridden claims that our clothing is socially constructed phenomena etc., but when you read the content more carefully, you notice that the book does not give you any better understanding of clothing.
   
   Furthermore, the book contains few references to empirical studies of clothing. Most references are to other articles in Cultural Studies (why our gender is socially constructed etc).
   
   There a few nice anecdotes and examples, but that does not come even close to covering the price of this book.



3. Susan Kaiser is a pioneer in the field. Her work sets the standard by which others should follow. This book is very readable. I recommend it to anyone who is fascinated by the impact of clothing on our culture/society.



4. For someone like me, a 15year old with both a strong interest in clothing and pyschology, this book was awesome. The Social Pschology of Clothing is a book about how we are dressed makes us seem to others. It explained how certain situations are handled due to the clothing involved. I highly recommend this book for anyone with a love for clothes and psychology. Ms. Kaiser, I may some day soon be doing a lenghthy research paper on this subject, and you have become a valuable resource.

1 comments about Cover Art By: New Music Graphics.

1. There are other wonderfully inspiring album cover showcases, but none that so intimately describe the relationships of designers with indie labels - many of whom also carry the mantle of label proprietor. [Finally I feel like I'm not a complete freak after all]. And what covers! As much as stefan sagmeister will always be the artist who took design for that most hated packaging standard - the CD - to a new level, (as well as being the designer who most challenges us to render with humanity) - here he is absent and this feels like a generation that is moving on. A variety of genres is transversed from electronic through to art music but a common ethos shines through. Unswervingly, the inescapable question is asked of each designer: "How do you feel ahout downloads?".. to which there are a variety of responses and emotions. None of which made me any less excited about this, the worst paid, and most rewarding gig there is.

4 comments about Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley (Dover Pictorial Archive Series).

1. This book is censored. Fine for a school library, but not true to the artists actual drawings.



2. 
   i was a bit dissapointed since i couldnt find the erotic illustrations from Lysistrata of Aristophanes.There are only details and expurgeted versions.



3. Big fan of this book. It's hard to believe he created so much in so little time. This book shows off a lot these works in good detail. I believe this is a must for anyone into art nouveau or Beardsley. Beardsley's use of large black spaces and intricate detail is highly evident in this book. I give it a 8.5 out of 10. Cheers, enjoy.



4. Inexpensive collection of Beardsley's black & white illustrations, mostly taken from other Beardsley books in the Dover catalogue. Some erotic penwork, but Aubrey's "obscene" art is quite tame by today's standards. Some of it even adorned the covers of magazines in his own time. Of course, the big value of this collection is that it's copyright free. You can use these illustrations in your crafts & collages or scan them for your websites. So, if you like that old decadent Nineties style (I mean 1890, not 1990), this book is one window you can peek through.