Designed for graphic designers, illustrators, and Web designers, this full-color book features undocumented techniques and artwork from word-class artists. The text features an in-depth discussion of using Painter's Image Hose which allows users to paint with digital images. The CD-ROM is packed with exclusive images, tutorials, and software.

Because nature is so expansive and complex, so varied in its range of light, landscape painters often have to look further and more deeply to find form and structure, value patterns, and an organized arrangement of shapes. In Landscape Painting, Mitchell Albala shares his concepts and practices for translating nature's grandeur, complexity, and color dynamics into convincing representations of space and light. Concise, practical, and inspirational, Landscape Painting focuses on the greatest challenges for the landscape artist, such as: • Simplification and Massing: Learn to reduce nature's complexity by looking beneath the surface of a subject to discover the form's basic masses and shapes.• Color and Light: Explore color theory as it specifically applies to the landscape, and learn the various strategies painters use to capture the illusion of natural light.• Selection and Composition: Learn to select wisely from nature's vast panorama. Albala shows you the essential cues to look for and how to find the most promising subject from a world of possibilities. The lessons in Landscape Painting—based on observation rather than imitation and applicable to both plein air and studio practice—are accompanied by painting examples, demonstrations, photographs, and diagrams. Illustrations draw from the work of more than 40 contemporary artists and such masters of landscape painting as John Constable, Sanford Gifford, and Claude Monet. Based on Albala's 25 years of experience and the proven methods taught at his successful plein air workshops, this in-depth guide to all aspects of landscape painting is a must-have for anyone getting started in the genre, as well as more experienced practitioners who want to hone their skills or learn new perspectives.

An artist-to-artist guide to acrylics today! Acrylics are an astoundingly versatile medium, as evidenced by the diversity of work emerging from studios around the country. This book takes you inside the studios and creative minds of 9 of today's top acrylic artists as they share favorite techniques, distinctive approaches, and examples of their best work. Packed with expert advice, Inside Acrylics will help beginning and intermediate artists make the most of both traditional acrylics and their new, slow-drying cousins. Real-world advice from 9 top acrylic artists, from the way they organize their palettes to tried and true strategies for painting in the studio, painting portraits, and painting outdoors. 18 step-by-step demonstrations of favorite techniques. How to use acrylic paints, gels and mediums to achieve the look of oil paints, innovations in mixed media, and effects not achievable with any other medium. Advice on everything from materials and color theory to varnishing and care of finished work. Inside Acrylics contains years of hands-on experience to help up-and-coming artists make sense of all the options, save trial-and-error time, and explore the exciting possibilities of this most remarkable medium.

If you yearn to say yes to your deepest expression in your art and life, this self-help book is for you. Dr. Hillis guides you past resistance on your artist's journey so you can finally trust yourself, develop confidence and cultivate deep exploration and experimentation in your art. Bonus resource library with videos lessons and book club guide.

"The Landscape Painter's Workbook takes a modern approach to the time-honored techniques and essential elements of landscape painting, from accomplished artist, veteran art instructor, and established author Mitchell Albala"--

Everything you always wanted to know about oil painting...but were afraid to ask. Or maybe you weren’t afraid—maybe you just didn’t know what to ask or where to start. In The Oil Painting Course You’ve Always Wanted, author Kathleen Staiger presents crystal clear, step-by-step lessons that build to reinforce learning. Brush control, creating the illusion of three dimensions, foolproof color mixing, still-life painting, landscapes, and portraits—every topic is covered in clear text, diagrams, illustrations, exercises, and demonstrations. Staiger has taught oil painting for more than thirty-five years; many of her students are now exhibiting and selling their paintings. Everyone from beginning hobby painters, to art students, to BFA graduates has questions about oil painting. Here at last are the answers!

Award-winning illustrator and painter Marjorie Sarnat presents an outstanding refresher course in creative thinking, suitable for artists of every level. In this guide, she shares the tips and techniques she's discovered in the course of her personal experiences and explorations. These 300 quick, easily grasped text passages detail methods for adding inspiration and innovation to your creative process. The new, hands-on approaches to materials, painting surfaces, and texture applications can help you find a fresh angle for your style or break through a creative block. Every "secret" in this book is expressed in practical terms geared toward boosting your artistic abilities. From sharpening your drawing skills and applying media in unique ways to creating intriguing visual illusions and refining your choices of color and composition, this guide is loaded with advice and fresh ideas. You'll also find cost-saving ways to obtain and manage your art tools and supplies as well as scores of ideas for making art with creative kids.

Another Fabulous Art History Thriller by the Bestselling Author of Oil and Marble, Featuring the Master of Renaissance Perfection: Raphael! Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the most iconic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here, in Raphael, Painter in Rome, Storey tells of its creation as never before: through the eyes of Michelangelo’s fiercest rival—the young, beautiful, brilliant painter of perfection, Raphael. Orphaned at age eleven, Raphael is determined to keep the deathbed promise he made to his father: become the greatest artist in history. But to be the best, he must beat the best, the legendary sculptor of the David, Michelangelo Buonarroti. When Pope Julius II calls both artists down to Rome, they are pitted against each other: Michelangelo painting the Sistine Ceiling, while Raphael decorates the pope's private apartments. As Raphael strives toward perfection in paint, he battles internal demons: his desperate ambition, crippling fear of imperfection, and unshakable loneliness. Along the way, he conspires with cardinals, scrambles through the ruins of ancient Rome, and falls in love with a baker’s-daughter-turned-prostitute who becomes his muse. With its gorgeous writing, rich settings, endearing characters, and riveting plot, Raphael, Painter in Rome brings to vivid life these two Renaissance masters going head to head in the deadly halls of the Vatican.

In this beautifully illustrated book in Collins Artist’s Studio series well-known artist Hazel Soan reveals 9 key secrets of watercolour painting that will enable painters with some experience to develop greater confidence and a more professional attitude to their work.