Make Your Mark with Confident, Dramatic Strokes Imagine painting with the virtuosity of the masters. With Bold Strokes, you can learn how, step by step. Beloved artist and teacher Mark Christopher Weber takes this seemingly complex manner of painting and breaks it down into simple, manageable steps that you can apply to your own style. He starts with the very basics so you can achieve success no matter what your skill level. Full-color photos and numbered steps illustrate in-depth instruction covering: Tools and Materials: everything you need from brushes to paint, including a section highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of both oils and acrylics Brushwork Basics: learn the mechanics of shaping brushes, loading paint and applying strokes for loose and expressive brushwork The Bold Challenge: use five basic strokes to manipulate thick paint and limit the number of overall strokes for heightened dramatic effect Mark provides many engaging ways to practice these basic strokes and brushwork techniques. Next, he helps you develop your new skills as you apply them to a series of step-by-step demonstrations. You'll deepen your understanding of: Drawing and Measuring: get a quick primer of these essential skills, plus new methods for using them to achieve bold strokes in every composition The Power of Suggestion: learn to identify the primary elements of your subjects so you can reduce every composition to its essential focus and place bold strokes in the most effective places Practice and Perfection: apply what you've learned to a range of compositions in both oils and acrylics, including landscapes, flowers, animals, portraits, figures and more so you can go forward in your own style with new vision and skill Every nuance is revealed in glowing detail. In no time, you'll use Bold Strokes to create a sense of motion, capture dazzling highlights, deliver emotional impact, produce lively color variations, and much more.

Historically, major women artists have been excluded from the mainstream art canon. Aligned with the resurgence of feminism in pop culture, Broad Strokes offers an entertaining corrective to that omission. Art historian Bridget Quinn delves into the lives and careers of 15 female artists from around the globe in text that's smart, feisty, educational, and an enjoyable read. Replete with beautiful reproductions of the artists' works and contemporary portraits of each artist by renowned illustrator Lisa Congdon, this is art history from the Renaissance to Abstract Expressionism for the modern art lover, reader, and feminist.

There are three things that Amy loves most in the world: Jo, her wife of 15 years; spending time with her closest friends; and her cabin in the woods. When she invites her friends to join her and Jo in their mountain hideaway, she expects good food, fine wine, and lively conversation. Unfortunately things don't go according to plan.

A sweeping saga of an impassioned romance set amidst the upheaval of a nation under siege and a way of life threatened with destruction. The American Civil War creates enemies of lifelong friends and allies of strangers, but no relationship is more unlikely than that of a passionate Northern Unionist and a loyal Virginia sympathizer. Actress and Northerner Jordan Colfax is hired by Allan Pinkerton to spy on behalf of the Union. When she meets Confederate sympathizer, Laura St. Clair, whose father is military aide to Jefferson Davis, the perfect opportunity presents itself. But when the truth about Jordan's real intentions are discovered, their growing love is put to the ultimate test - the result of which could mean the difference between life and death. Can a Southern belle and a Yankee spy overcome their differences or will divided loyalties keep them apart? From Tidewater Virginia to Washington, D.C., passion and betrayal converge in Civil War Richmond.

Peri Logan’s first client is dead, but not in a morbid way. When her great-grandmother passes, her estate bequeathed Peri a piece of jewelry, a stack of cash, and a note that simply reads “find her.” As a newly licensed private investigator, Peri travels to Italy to find the mysterious woman whose photo was perfectly preserved in the heart-shaped locket. What she doesn’t expect is to be given the runaround from a beautiful stranger who offers to help and does anything but. Camila Barnes is bored. Nothing exciting ever happens in the small town of Sequina, Italy. When a pushy American shows up demanding to meet the woman in Camila’s artwork, instead of introducing her to her great-grandmother, Camila decides to lead her on a wild goose chase all over town. Nobody messes with her family, especially people who won’t tell her why. When the truth is finally revealed, Peri and Camila realize they are a part of something greater than they ever expected. Attraction is fleeting and true love touches only a few. Do they take the easy road home, or do they fight the odds and give love the chance to last for always?

Victorija Dred, Principe of the Dred clan, is one of the most feared vampires to walk the earth, but since her unwanted blood bond with Daisy, she’s slowly losing herself to blood sickness. Her clan is dismayed by her reluctance to order Daisy brought to her. The old Victorija would have used her for her blood without a second thought. However no one knows of the age-old vow holding her back. Daisy MacDougall is struggling to cope with the vampire bite that is urging her to seek out Victorija. Secrets and history bind them in unfathomable ways, and when she discovers her family’s past and a very different Victorija, she vows to find the truth even if she must force their meeting. Victorija and Daisy travel a dark and seductive path even as Victorija fights every instinct to take Daisy’s blood, and love seems all but impossible. As if that wasn’t bad enough, neither expects the real threat to Daisy’s life to be hiding inside the Dred clan.

Women. Crime. Justice. At least the search for it. On the mean streets, the back allies, the dark corners. These are stories of tough women in hard places. The nights are long, the women are fast, and danger is always a short block or quick minute away. Edited by award winning author/editors J.M. Redmann and Greg Herren, Women of the Mean Streets is an anthology of some of the top, tough women crime writers today, noir stories with a lesbian twist.

Some mornings, Sara Chambers wakes in bed next to her girlfriend and her girlfriendÕs lover wondering how she ended up there. Beautiful, successful, and a force to be reckoned with at her Atlanta law firm, Sara is still powerless in her attraction to the rebellious and reckless, Rille Thompson. As college girlfriends, Sara and RilleÕs relationship had been incendiary, burning away SaraÕs innocence and self-respect even as it widened her world beyond her wildest imagination. Now, almost twenty years later, Rille still pushes Sara beyond her limits, bringing a third lover into their bed and domestic lives when their monogamy gets stale. The hold Rille has over SaraÑand their new loverÑbecomes as powerful as it is dangerous. Can Sara pull herself free in time, or will her life turn to cinders in the wake of RilleÕs powerful flame?

When Dr. Elizabeth Cowrie shows up in Salem, Massachusetts, to study the witch trials, Hazel and her best friend, Roxy, are both instantly attracted to the workaholic professor. Roxy snags a date with Elizabeth first, but when their chemistry fizzles out, Hazel sees an opportunity to pursue Elizabeth herself—until she realizes Elizabeth is avowedly anti-magic. That’s definitely a problem since Hazel is a bona fide witch: rides a broom, has a black cat, brews love potions, lives in a haunted house, and has a vampire ex-girlfriend. Roxy is the only person who knows the truth, and Hazel has gotten used to hiding who she is, but she can’t live a lie with the person she loves most. Can Hazel give up magic to make it work with Elizabeth? Or will she give up on the love of her life instead?

Renee Chambers is a burgeoning germaphobe in search of a new job—something less stressful than her last job, teaching high school students. When her supposedly psychic best friend, Ellen, points her toward an odd little bookstore and a strange, otherworldly woman, Adrianne, Renee is thrown for a loop. One awkward interview and an even stranger psychic encounter later, Renee gets the job. Then Ellen’s psychic dabbling has unintended consequences when Renee meets a pushy new friend, Katherine, a jealous ghost who's convinced they are soul mates. A casino trip, a drunken drag show, an old beater of a car, and a pair of dinosaur panties push Renee to the edge, but the real kicker is when Katherine starts getting more insistent and borrowing bodies. All Renee wants is a peaceful, fledgling hermit existence, but that’s unlikely unless she can figure out her true connection to Katherine, Ellen, and Adrianne. To discover the truth, she must come to terms with her past and learn how to embrace the future.