No comments about Colorscape: An Around-The-World Guide to Color.

2 comments about Natural Surfaces: Visual Research for Artists, Architects, and Designers.

1. I bought this book as a resource for Theatre Design and it has proven to be a valuable asset. I can look through the photos in the book while researching and use the CD to put together presentations. The book's overall content is wide ranging and detailed, and is organized well. I would recommend this book to anyone in the arts, even if you don't use it for research, it's cool to look though.



2. This book is one of the best references for any designer and painter in the industry. Color Photos are amazing and complete. I have been wanting to purchase it for years now and am very glad to add it to my collection. All of her books are worth having in any artists library.

1 comments about Vintage Labels and Posters CD-ROM and Book (Full-Color Electronic Design Series).

1. Love the colorful posters in this book - it's a fine addition to my library. I'm in love with big files so, while the CD offered with the book is great and the images are 300 dpi, they're a bit small. You can recover from that if you want larger versions, by scanning the images yourself.

1 comments about Grids for the Internet & Other Digital Media.

1. Another superb book by Götz. Although the title is a tad dry and does not suggest that the book will appeal to the same wide audience as Type for the Internet, in fact `Grids' is just as fascinating and timely. Gotz describes how websites (and other browser-read creations) should be laid out for maximum effectiveness. Her analysis is practical and how-to, leading from the apparently obvious problem of landscape layout , the limits of legibility on screen, to the more elaborate problems of dynamic and interactive pages. But the very practicality of Gotz's approach, and her sharp focus, only make it doubly clear how our whole philosophic engagement with information is radically changed by the new technologies. Gotz does not resist the temptation to point at some of the larger issues by truffling her boook with witty quotations and maxims from the great savants, all presented with a layout full of panache.

1 comments about The Golden Age: Manuscript Painting at the Time of Jean, Duke of Berry.

1. I have owned my copy of this book for many years, for the simple reason that the illustrations in it are all beautifully reproduced samples of what is justifiably seen as a golden age in illuminated manuscript painting c1380-1420.

   The book starts with an introduction into the various artists and their techniques and their patrons. This is followed up by full page reproductions, mostly of "carpet pages" from various manuscripts. This includes books such as: - The Bodmer Hours, The Visconti Hours, The Bible of King Wenceslas, The Psalter of Jean De Berry, The Belles Heures of Jean De Berry, The Boucicaut Hours and The Rohan Hours as a small sample.

   The plates are beautiful reproductions, with gold in used to highlight various manuscripts. However, luckily, it has not been so heavily printed as to obscure detail. For an overall purely visual look of the range and beauty of manuscripts of this period this book is hard to beat.

1 comments about Quality Assurance for Textiles and Apparel.

1. Author Sara J. Kadolph, deserves a pat on her back, for Authoring this book.

   I like the way she has prsented the whole subject.
   The Logical sequence she has followed in appointing the various topics.
   The coverage of various topics is excellent.

   Being a Teacher of Textile Quality Assurance in India, I am definitely finding the book extremely useful is preparing my Lectures.

   I would say its a must buy for any one involved in Textile Quality Assurance.

No comments about Imprinting the South: Southern Printmakers and their Images of the Region, 1920s-1940s.

3 comments about Seeing Things s/c.

1. There is a malicious rumor being bantered about in the hip bistros and skidrow dives of Seattle's Belltown and in the Fremont District's street fairs and opium dens that there is no such human individual named Jim Woodring but that, in fact, this name is the invention of a collective of highly talented but anarchistic Elfish refugees from the North Pole. They supposedly immigrated to Seattle after being sacked from Santa's workshop for "designing toys of a degenerate and dangerous nature" and for "failing to abide by the Kringle dress code", which doesn't permit tattoos or body piercings. They settled in the Emerald City and garnered some success by exploiting the craze for blown glass art until the Chihuly art cartel's Double Eyepatch Posse made them an offer they couldn't refuse. Preferring to keep the use of their eyes the elves decided to cease glass blowing and, working under the pseudonym "Jim Woodring" (Which is a euphemism for a marital aid), adapted their skills to the burgeoning comix/graphic novel industry. Here they found their raison d'etre.
   
   I can attest that this story is false and that Mr. Woodring is an individual and a human. One only needs to peruse Jimwoodring's website to find a nice photo of the artist; who is by all accounts a very nice elderly gentleman. Now on to the book.
   
   This generously illustrated book doesn't contain any of Mr. Woodring's sequential comic art but does contain work of a more artistic bent, done in a virtuosic hallucinatory style. It is divided into four sections: The Visible World, Lazy Robinson, Frogs, & Color. The first three are comprised of delicious black and white drawings and fourth is, oddly enough, color work. Each division is fronted by an essay which, while shedding no light on the art, is often hilarious and occasionally disturbing autobiographic confabulations and ruminations.
   
   "The Visible World" is composed of 27 drawings, most one per page and some double page spreads (The double spreads are bifurcated by the binding; a keyfold would have served them better. Subtract one star.). These illuminate polymorphic entities involved in various narratives in interior spaces, landscapes or in undefined locals.
   
   "Lazy Robinson" has 29, one per page, drawings that resemble a collection of specimens collected by a marine biologist from a dream ocean or perhaps slides from a meta-dimensional microbiologist's sample case.
   
   "Frogs" contains 14 illustrations (Again, some marred by being split across two pages.) of our amphibious brethren "enjoying" interesting times.
   
   "Color" also show 14 works (Some split up the middle by the crease in the book.), this time in watercolor, acrylics (I think.), and oils presenting wonderfully sadistic and disturbing wind up tin toys, more frogs in extremis and landscapes and interiors inhabited by poly-biomorphs (Sorry, that's the best term I can conjure up to apply here.).
   
   Mr. Woodring is a skilled draftsman and his meticulous charcoal renderings are perfectly balanced and subtlety nuanced. He employs a smooth blended technique that gives life and a depth to his surreal images. The mood and drawing technique here find their nearest stylistic kin in M. C. Escher, with imagery more attuned to Hieronymus Bosch by way of Chuck Jones.
   
   The color work is equally astounding. Whether working in watercolor, acrylics or oils Mr. Woodring's painting ability never ceases to impress. His colors are bright, rich and saturated. And this color sense meshed with impeccably smooth technique enhance these bizarre tableaus with charm and buoyancy. Yes, buoyant charm!
   
   When I showed this book to my wife, Empress Zip, she exclaimed "Wow! Bizarro! This guy's seriously disturbed!" I was in heaven!
   
   I give this four stars not five because some of the double page reproductions cut the image in half. Thus ruining the picture. Otherwise, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!



2. Jim Woodring's charcoal drawings are images that come from his interest in hidden worlds and lucid art - and SEEING THINGS gathers some of the most intriguing, arranging them in sections by topic: Visible World, Lazy Robinson, Frogs and Color. 'Color' by far seems the most exciting, dramatizing the drawings and providing eye-catching involvement in the symbolism of the unseen - while the black and white charcoal drawings might appeal most to artists who find color distracting. With its blends of surrealism and irony, SEEING THINGS invites viewers to observe in a different light.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



3. This tome is worth the price of admission for the chapter introductions alone. The rest is the algae on the pond water. If you're familiar with Jim Woodring, you know what to expect, which is that you don't know what to expect: a fresh, heaping gobbet of queasy delight around every page, a snapshot of that lushly sterile suburban landscape where deliciously canted reality keeps intruding like crusty mold fingering its way through the kitchen wall. If you're not familiar with Woodring, I suggest going to sleep immediately after viewing the contents, before they have time to take root in the febrile soil of your high pink garden. Either that, or don't sleep for three days after. Either way, it doesn't get comfortable. I would shower this with 5 stars, but Jim knows better than I that nothing is perfect, not even our own opinions. Once as a child, I chopped a centipede in half with a toy shovel (they were metal in those days); the back half kept walking while the front half stayed put, contemplating, no doubt, an afterlife where you'd need your ass more than your eyes.

3 comments about Birds.

1. Robert Bateman is one of my favorite wildlife artist, and his first two books are absolutely outstanding. But after that, my sense is that the quality of his work has been going down, while the prices of his paintings (and maybe because of this) have been going up. This book is at the very bottom of his (in my opinion) downward trend. A very few of the paintings you will find in this book are great, but most are unimpressive, and some are outright ugly, clearly done in a rush. You will find very few of those beautiful masterpieces in which the nature surrounding the animal is as important as (sometimes more than) the animal itself. This is an OK book, but it's been a great disappointment, especially because I remember the awe that his previous work inspired me. If you really have to purchase ONE recent book on wildlife art my advice is: buy Jonsson's "Birds and light", which in my opinion is as outstanding as the earlier Bateman (but his style is completely different).



2. Robert Bateman's Birds exquisite visual imagery is brought to life by the richness of narratives that evoke the senses. One experiences the subjects from an armchair with almost the authenticity of a field sighting. As a Bateman fan, I continue to be impressed by his extraordinarily gifted and sensitive depictions of our natural world.



3. Robert Bateman's latest book Birds (foreword by Peter Maththiessen, Pantheon Books, 2002) is a selection of birds he has painted near his home and around the world. For followers of Bateman, this is not a collection of paintings seen in previous books - most of the nearly 200 paintings were painted in the last few years. They include pencil and watercolour wash sketches to full canvas paintings. Characteristic of Bateman's work, the birds in Birds are wonderfully alive. His snow goose bursting from a nest exhibits the explosiveness of the event. A blue crane wading in evening light on a languid pond is exquisitely designed. A foreboding assault by giant petrels on a gentoo penguin is portrayed with all its fury and vigor of the moment. Accompanying each painting is a brief text describing Bateman's experiences and some natural history. This book would make a marvelous addition to anyone interested in nature or art.

No comments about Design Dictionary: Perspectives on Design Terminology (Board of International Research in Design).