Indulge your creative curiosity and take your art off the canvas, off the board, and into the brave new world of Alternative Art Surfaces! Mixed-media powerhouse duo Darlene Olivia McElroy and Sandra Duran Wilson, authors of the best-selling books Image Transfer Workshop, Surface Treatment Workshop and Mixed Media Revolution, blaze new creative territory with more than 100 techniques for working on more than 35 unique surfaces in this, their jam-packed fourth book!You'll find something new and exciting on every page: • More than 35 alternative surfaces, including galvanized tin, mica, rawhide, nylon, unsanded grout, slate, spray foam and more • More than 100 techniques for painting, sculpting, creating textures, encasing, carving, printing, transferring and more • More than 125 tips for troubleshooting, preparing your surfaces, finishing and mounting your art, and taking your work to the next level • More than 50 inspiring finished pieces of art showcasing the surfaces and techniques

Taxidermy, once the province of natural history and dedicated to the pursuit of lifelike realism, has recently resurfaced in the world of contemporary art, culture, and interior design. In Speculative Taxidermy, Giovanni Aloi offers a comprehensive mapping of the discourses and practices that have enabled the emergence of taxidermy in contemporary art. Drawing on the speculative turn in philosophy and recovering past alternative histories of art and materiality from a biopolitical perspective, Aloi theorizes speculative taxidermy: a powerful interface that unlocks new ethical and political opportunities in human-animal relationships and speaks to how animal representation conveys the urgency of addressing climate change, capitalist exploitation, and mass extinction. A resolutely nonanthropocentric take on the materiality of one of the most controversial mediums in art, this approach relentlessly questions past and present ideas of human separation from the animal kingdom. It situates taxidermy as a powerful interface between humans and animals, rooted in a shared ontological and physical vulnerability. Carefully considering a select number of key examples including the work of Nandipha Mntambo, Maria Papadimitriou, Mark Dion, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Roni Horn, Oleg Kulik, Steve Bishop, Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, and Cole Swanson, Speculative Taxidermy contextualizes the resilient presence of animal skin in the gallery space as a productive opportunity to rethink ethical and political stances in human-animal relationships.

Breaking the Surface Pondering how to begin a new piece of art? Surface Treatment Workshop has the answer! The authors of Image Transfer Workshop are back to show you 45 stepped-out mixed-media techniques that will add depth and texture to your artwork. These techniques are the perfect jump-off point for creating art you will love to look at, and, in some cases, touch! In this comprehensive guide, youÆll find: • 45 techniques. Exciting new applications such as the use of WonderUnder, pulled paper and plaster-dipped gauze will provide you with fresh ideas--many previously unpublished. • Multiple variations. Each technique features swatches and descriptions to take the techniques in multiple directions with multiple mixed-media products. • Inspirational style. Fully stepped-out projects from two artists will show you how to combine the techniques into finished works of art that can go in any artistic style. Take Surface Treatment Workshop with you on your artistic journey for beautiful beginnings.

In Surface Relations Vivian L. Huang traces how Asian and Asian American artists have strategically reworked the pernicious stereotype of inscrutability as a dynamic antiracist, feminist, and queer form of resistance. Following inscrutability in literature, visual culture, and performance art since 1965, Huang articulates how Asian American artists take up the aesthetics of Asian inscrutability—such as invisibility, silence, unreliability, flatness, and withholding—to express Asian American life. Through analyses of diverse works by performance artists (Tehching Hsieh, Baseera Khan, Emma Sulkowicz, Tseng Kwong Chi), writers (Kim Fu, Kai Cheng Thom, Monique Truong), and video, multimedia, and conceptual artists (Laurel Nakadate, Yoko Ono, Mika Tajima), Huang challenges neoliberal narratives of assimilation that erase Asianness. By using sound, touch, and affect, these artists and writers create new frameworks for affirming Asianness as a source of political and social critique and innovative forms of life and creativity. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Recycle, Reuse, Reinvent! With Mixed Media Revolution, you'll learn how to leverage your art and take your paintings and transfers to the next level! Leftovers, little bits and scraps, pieces of art that didn't turn out quite right ... we all have them. And it hurts to have to throw them away. But what if someone could suggest another way? Another way, perhaps, to get one more use out of that transparency. Or cut up a piece of art and put it back together differently. Or use leftover paint to create one-of-a-kind transfers? Darlene Olivia McElroy and Sandra Duran Wilson, in their groundbreaking third book, will show you how to do all those things and more! Inside You'll Find: 10 themed chapters More than 50 fully stepped-out, photographic mixed media techniques More than 80 additional fast and easy techniques Dozens of troubleshooting tips and variations More than 70 big, beautiful finished pieces of art illustrating the techniques Links to online bonus content You'll find something new and exciting on every page--add Mixed Media Revolution to your creative toolbox and expand your artistic horizons today!

Liberate Your Creativity with Acrylic Paints! Acrylic Revolution is your essential, all-in-one guide for acrylic painting techniques and more. It features over 101 ways to break through the boundaries of conventional painting and re-define the creative potential of this all-purpose medium. Every page provides insight on how to use acrylic paint in ways you never thought possible to create stunning visual effects and textures. Ten complete sections detail a range of empowering applications, including how to: • Prepare and paint on virtually any surface • Create textures of all kinds • Work with transfers, collage, resists and mixed media • Achieve innovative stenciling and line work • Customize your paint to adjust thickness, transparency and drying time • Simulate other mediums, such as oil, tempera or watercolor • Create faux finishes, magical effects, sheens and more To give you additional insight and inspiration, this book features a gallery of finished works by fellow painting revolutionaries that blend various acrylic techniques to create amazing effects. You'll also find practical advice that covers the basics and beyond—from selecting materials and cleaning your brushes to finishing and preserving your artwork. There's even a complete glossary of terms for fast and easy referencing. Pick up a brush and start your own acrylic revolution today! Use the techniques in this book to free your creative spirit and create the paintings you've always dreamed of.

With page after page of stimulating possibilities, this book guides you on an uncompromising journey to visually dynamic, conceptually provocative, utterly original art. Embrace the spirit of creative play, break out of your comfort zone, and take your art to a whole new level. In her follow-up to the popular Art Revolution, Lisa L. Cyr delves deeper into an inspiring range of two and three-dimensional mixed-media techniques. Discover fresh, alternative ways to apply and manipulate painting media, transform surfaces, and create distinctive, message-driven work. Inside you'll find: • A wide array of unconventional tools, materials and processes that help artists blaze their own unique and creative paths • 12 step-by-step demonstrations highlighting specific experimental techniques, including freeform painting, making custom tools, and building dimension into a surface with inlaid boxes • 3 feature demonstrations showing mixed-media processes at play in the creation of original artworks, from concept to completion • A chapter on creative self-promotion revealing the latest marketing and presentation strategies for the working artist

Artist Toolbox: Surfaces & Supports explores a wide range of drawing and painting surfaces and the unique effects they have on a variety of media. The surface you draw or paint on impacts everything in your artwork, from its texture and brightness to color and durability. Artist Toolbox: Surfaces & Supports covers the drawing and painting surfaces and supports that all artists should know. With this art book, you'll learn the basics and finer points of working on: Canvas Paper Panels Textiles Metal Glass Stone You'll also learn useful tips and techniques for preparing supports to receive media, see how to work with different media on each support, and discover the most effective way to protect your finished artwork. Artist Toolbox: Surfaces & Supports is packed with visual examples, step-by-step tutorials, and demonstrations on the practical aspects of working with graphite and colored pencils;charcoal and pastel;and watercolor, acrylic, and oilpaints. With this reference guide that no artist's library should be without, you can also learn how each support will take a medium. The Artist Toolbox series presents practical reference guides designed for beginning artists interested in fully understanding the focus and function of essential art tools of the trade.

Outstanding refresher course in creative thinking presents more than 300 methods and techniques for helping artists find a new angle for an existing style or get past a creative block.

With Sensuous Surfaces, Jonathan Hay offers one of the most richly illustrated and in-depth introductions to the decorative arts of Ming and Qing dynasty China to date. Examining an immense number of works, he explores the materials and techniques, as well as the effects of patronage and taste, that together have formed a loose system of informal rules that define the decorative arts in early modern China. Hay demonstrates how this system—by engaging the actual and metaphorical potential of surface—guided the production and use of decorative arts from the late sixteenth century through the middle of the nineteenth, a period of explosive growth. He shows how the understanding of decorative arts made a fundamental contribution to the sensory education of China’s early modern urban population. Enriching his study with 280 color plates, he ultimately offers an elegant meditation, not only on Ming and Qing art but on the importance of the erotic in the form and function of decorations of all eras.