Make Your Own Artist's Tools and Materials


Book Description

Make pigments, brushes, bamboo pens, palettes, felt-tip markers, etching needles, woodblock press, a portable drafting table, more.




Artists' Materials


Book Description




Sam Francis


Book Description

The next title in the respected Artist’s Materials series offers groundbreaking analysis of Sam Francis’s working methods and materials American artist Sam Francis (1923–1994) brought vivid color and emotional intensity to Abstract Expressionism. He was described as the “most sensuous and sensitive painter of his generation” by former Guggenheim Museum director James Johnson Sweeney, and curator Howard Fox called him “one of the acknowledged masters of late-modern art.” Francis’s works, whether intimate or monumental in scale, make indelible impressions; the intention of the artist was to make them felt as much as seen. At the age of twenty, Francis was hospitalized for spinal tuberculosis and spent three years virtually immobilized in a body cast. For physical therapy he was given a set of watercolors, and, as he described it, he painted his way back to life. The exuberant color and expression in his paintings celebrated his survival; his five-decade career was an energetic visual and theoretical exploration that took him around the world. Francis’s idiosyncratic painting practices have long been the subject of speculation and debate among conservators and art historians. Presented here for the first time in this volume are the results of an in-depth scientific study of more than forty paintings from the late 1940s to early 1990s, which reveal new discoveries about his creative process, inventive techniques, and specially formulated paints and binders. The data provides a key to the complicated evolution of the artist’s work and informs original art historical interpretations.




Clyfford Still: The Artist's Museum


Book Description

The first significant publication on Clyfford Still and his work in more than twenty-five years celebrates one of abstract expressionism’s founders. Best known for his compelling abstract works with jagged fields and powerful expanses of color, Clyfford Still (1904–1980) stands among the giants of post–World War II art. Together with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Barnett Newman, Still helped shape abstract expressionism. This vividly illustrated book presents more than one hundred of Still’s greatest works and is the first comprehensive catalogue of the new Clyfford Still Museum in Denver. The book offers intimate reflections written by his daughters Sandra Still Campbell and Diane Still Knox; Dean Sobel chronicles the origins of the new museum; and David Anfam, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Still’s work, gives a new scholarly and critical perspective of Still, made possible by the opening of the museum. Illustrations include monumental paintings, works on paper, and Still’s only sculptures, many of which have never been published or publicly exhibited.




Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice


Book Description

Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.




Art in the Making


Book Description

The first book to address the significance of the materials and methods used to make contemporary artworks Today, artists are able to create using multiple methods of production—from painting to digital technologies to crowdsourcing—some of which would have been unheard of just a few decades ago. Yet, even as our means of making art become more extraordinary and diverse, they are almost never addressed in their specificity. While critics and viewers tend to focus on the finished products we see in museums and galleries, authors Glenn Adamson and Julia Bryan-Wilson argue that the materials and processes behind the scenes used to make artworks are also vital to current considerations of authorship and to understanding the economic and social contexts from which art emerges. This wide-ranging exploration of different methods and media in art since the 1950s includes nine chapters that focus on individual processes of making: Painting, Woodworking, Building, Performing, Tooling Up, Cashing In, Fabricating, Digitizing, and Crowdsourcing. Detailed examples are interwoven with the discussion, including visuals that reveal the intricacies of techniques and materials. Artists featured include Ai Weiwei, Alice Aycock, Isa Genzken, Los Carpinteros, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Santiago Sierra, and Rachel Whiteread.




The Artist's Handbook


Book Description

Readers discover their inner talents with this illustrated, project-based guide to drawing and painting. Angela Gair teaches art techniques in a step-by-step format that makes it easy to learn the basics and create personal works of art. Over 400 color illustrations throughout.




An Artist's Handbook


Book Description

This practical reference book introduces basic materials and processes for drawing and painting. Each technique is clearly explained and discussed from its historical roots to contemporary practice. Students are encouraged to explore the methods from scratch, encountering the work through preparation of the wood panel or canvas, the mixing of pigments and the application of paint. Richly illustrated throughout with over 400 images—historical and contemporary examples of works as well as photographs of studio practice—this book is an indispensable reference for students and anyone engaged in finding out about drawing and painting materials and techniques.




Creative Illustration Workshop for Mixed-Media Artists


Book Description

Whether you have experience drawing or are completely new to it, this exciting workshop-style book provides practical, inspiring, and creative exercises which will expand your drawing skills and provide a framework for integrating illustration with other mixed-media techniques, With a focus on drawing what you love and what is familiar, you will be led through the development of several illustration exercises, which launch from jotted notes and eventually blossom into unique mixed-media creations. You will become familiar with a wide variety of media and approaches to drawing, learn how to work through "creative blocks," and discover ways to scan and layer your illustrations using a computer.




Sidney Nolan


Book Description

The newest addition to the Artist’s Materials series offers the first technical study of one of Australia’s greatest modern painters. Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) is renowned for an oeuvre ranging from views of Melbourne’s seaside suburb St. Kilda to an iconic series on outlaw hero Ned Kelly. Working in factories from age fourteen, Nolan began his training spray painting signs on glass, which was followed by a job cutting and painting displays for Fayrefield Hats. Such employment offered him firsthand experience with commercial synthetic paints developed during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1939, having given up his job at Fayrefield in pursuit of an artistic career, Nolan became obsessed with European abstract paintings he saw reproduced in books and magazines. With little regard for the longevity of his work, he began to exploit materials such as boot polish, dyes, secondhand canvas, tissue paper, and old photographs, in addition to commercial and household paints. He continued to embrace new materials after moving to London in 1953. Oil-based Ripolin enamel is known to have been Nolan’s preferred paint, but this fascinating study—certain to appeal to conservators, conservation scientists, art historians, and general readers with an interest in modern art—reveals his equally innovative use of nitrocellulose, alkyds, and other diverse materials.