Your Year in Art


Book Description

Overflowing with drawing prompts and tips, Your Year in Art will invigorate beginning and practicing artists as they build skills, gain confidence, and overcome artistic anxiety with fun, creative prompts for every week of the year. Leave your artistic anxiety behind with 52 weeks of hearty inspiration. Your Year in Art is a must-have guide to rouse your creative side. Designed for aspiring, beginning, and practicing artists looking to hone their skills, Your Year in Art is packed with unique projects and encouraging instruction. The mission of Your Year in Art is to sharpen your art skills and quiet your inner critic by showing you how to draw habitually and spontaneously. As you build your craft, techniques, and confidence, this guide encourages you to create in a way that celebrates your individuality. Fifty-two clever drawing prompts, along with tips and tricks, from expert illustrator Chelsea Ward will get your creative juices flowing. Weekly challenges include making a “self-portrait” by sketching things that describe you; practicing mark-making techniques like cross-hatching and stippling; filling a sketchbook page with drawings on a theme, like potted plants or fire hydrants; and adding water to ink drawings to practice wash techniques. Join fellow artists in an exciting yearlong journey of developing creative habits and discovering new ways to express yourself.




Your Year in Art: Watercolor


Book Description

Overcome your creative blocks and fears and start painting with confidence with Your Year in Art: Watercolor! Filled with weekly art challenges, step-by-step watercolor lessons, helpful tips and techniques, and gorgeous artwork, this follow-up to the drawing-focused Your Year in Art is a must-have for any watercolor artist. Written and illustrated by Kristin Van Leuven, owner of the popular online art shop Hello Lovely People and author of Modern Watercolor (Walter Foster Publishing), Your Year in Art: Watercolor seeks to motivate and inspire. The book is divided into weekly art challenges and prompts that cover appealing themes like florals, birds, and portraits, as well as inspirational ideas for painting patterns, holiday decorations, scenery, and so much more. Lessons and prompts are guided but invite personalization so you can build your skills while celebrating your own unique style. If you're a beginning artist, you might feel intimidated by watercolor, a medium that doesn't allow for many errors. However, Kristin Van Leuven makes watercolor fun and approachable with her easy-to-follow tips and free-flowing, expressive style. With her guidance, you'll learn to embrace imperfection and use the lessons as inspiration, rather than something to imitate exactly. With Your Year in Art: Watercolor, develop your own painting style and express yourself using watercolor!




My Year of Art


Book Description

365 art-based, on-the-page activities; stimulates the creative left brain; takes a straightforward approach - art is for everyone, every day; and provides inspirational content.Three hundred sixty-five art-based, on-the-page activities-one for each day of the year. A combination of imaginative prompts and step-by-steps are designed to unleash creativity. Inspirational content devised by expert author Susan Schwake will stimulate the creative left brain; the diverse range of activities include wearing your favorite color and noticing how it makes you feel, feeling different textures, counting the number of different colors in your bedroom, and recording it all in words and pictures in your journal. The straightforward approach of this book encourages the reader to think creatively, even if they don't feel that they have the "right" skills or knowledge. When completed, the reader will have a souvenir of the 365 days in which they discovered their own personal creativity.




Why Your Five-year-old Could Not Have Done that


Book Description

Come on, you know you've thought it--while viewing a "masterpiece" of abstract art, you mutter, "A kid could do that." Here Susie Hodge, author of How to Survive Modern Art, explains why the best examples of modern art are actually the result of sophisticated thought and serious talent. From Marcel Duchamp's notorious Fountain and the scribbles of Cy Twombly to Mark Rothko's multiforms and Carl Andre's uncarved blocks, Hodge addresses critical outrage with a revealing insight into the technical skill, layering of ideas, and sheer inspiration behind each work. In cleverly organized chapters such as "Objects/ Toys," "Provocations/Tantrums," and "People/Monsters," Hodges thoughtfully and definitively lays bare the perception that modern art is mere child's play.




Your Year in Art


Book Description

Overflowing with drawing prompts and tips, Your Year in Art will invigorate beginning and practicing artists as they build skills, gain confidence, and overcome artistic anxiety. Leave your artistic anxiety behind with 52 weeks of hearty inspiration. Your Year in Art is a must-have guide to rouse your creative side. Designed for aspiring, beginning, and practicing artists looking to hone their skills, Your Year in Art is packed with unique projects and encouraging instruction. The mission of Your Year in Art is to sharpen your art skills and quiet your inner critic by showing you how to draw habitually and spontaneously. As you build your craft, techniques, and confidence, this guide encourages you to create in a way that celebrates your individuality. Fifty-two clever drawing prompts, along with tips and tricks, from expert illustrator Chelsea Ward will get your creative juices flowing. Weekly challenges include making a “self-portrait” by sketching things that describe you; practicing mark-making techniques like cross-hatching and stippling; filling a sketchbook page with drawings on a theme, like potted plants or fire hydrants; and adding water to ink drawings to practice wash techniques. Join fellow artists in an exciting yearlong journey of developing creative habits and discovering new ways to express yourself.




The Little Hands Art Book


Book Description

"The perfect introductory art book for little hands with lots to express! Instructions are kept to a minimum, and resulting art is very clever as kids' imaginations take flight with simple materials."--Back cover




A Year in the Art World


Book Description

An insider's detailed chronicle of the inner workings of the contemporary art world, now in paperback.




Your Year in Art: Watercolor


Book Description

Overcome your creative blocks and fears and start painting with confidence with Your Year in Art: Watercolor! Filled with weekly art challenges, step-by-step watercolor lessons, helpful tips and techniques, and gorgeous artwork, this follow-up to the drawing-focused Your Year in Art is a must-have for any watercolor artist. Written and illustrated by Kristin Van Leuven, owner of the popular online art shop Hello Lovely People and author of Modern Watercolor (Walter Foster Publishing), Your Year in Art: Watercolor seeks to motivate and inspire. The book is divided into weekly art challenges and prompts that cover appealing themes like florals, birds, and portraits, as well as inspirational ideas for painting patterns, holiday decorations, scenery, and so much more. Lessons and prompts are guided but invite personalization so you can build your skills while celebrating your own unique style. If you're a beginning artist, you might feel intimidated by watercolor, a medium that doesn't allow for many errors. However, Kristin Van Leuven makes watercolor fun and approachable with her easy-to-follow tips and free-flowing, expressive style. With her guidance, you'll learn to embrace imperfection and use the lessons as inspiration, rather than something to imitate exactly. With Your Year in Art: Watercolor, develop your own painting style and express yourself using watercolor!




A Year in Art


Book Description

"A companion for every day, with well-known works of art and words of wisdom to inspire and delight you throughout the year"--Page [4] of cover.




Create Your Life Book


Book Description

Inspired by artist Tamara Laporte’s popular online art classes (willowing.org), Create Your Life Book presents 18 step-by-step mixed-media drawing and painting projects that encourage self-fulfillment through the creative process. Tamara’s kind, non-judgmental voice guides your way. What is holding you back? Where do you want to go? Let go of the past! Use these expressive exercises to help you recognize your personal challenges and other obstacles, then work through them. Let go of limiting beliefs, find courage, feel gratitude, heal pain, and develop self-love as you playfully create. Each themed chapter presents four to five two-part projects. First, you will explore a common issue that hampers creativity and/or positive self-worth. The second portion is a step-by-step mixed-media art project designed to help you work through that issue. Just a few of the explorations: Let go of what no longer serves you by taking stock of what’s holding you back, then create a zentangle butterfly to symbolize you flying away from those limiting things. Embrace and love your inner quirky bird by taking an inventory of your quirky traits, then create a bird that celebrates them. Heal old wounds by writing a letter to yourself as a child, then create a house to keep your inner child safe. Adding rich variety to the messages and art inspiration, some of the project outlines have been contributed by Tamara's guest teachers: Roxanne Coble, Andrea Gomoll, Alena Hennessy, Mystele Kirkeeng, Ivy Newport, and Effy Wild, each of whom are noted mixed-media artists in their own right. The final chapter presents a simple binding method for creating a keepsake book of your Life Book projects. Steeped in inspirational images and uplifting affirmations, Create Your Life Book can help you achieve both personal and creative growth.