Paint Amazing Watercolors from Photographs

Paint Amazing Watercolors from Photographs Review

Everything you need to know to turn your photos into beautiful, light-filled watercolors.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, watercolor has the power to transform that picture into pure poetry. This book will show you how to do just that, step by creative step. Inside, you'll learn how to take great reference photos of the people, places and things that intrigue you, and use the unique qualities of watercolor to turn them into original and striking paintings.

• Paint a range of popular subjects, including people, landscapes, architecture, still life and interiors.
• 18 step-by-step painting demonstrations take you through the entire painting process, from start to finish.
• Expert advice for shooting reference photos gives you a jumpstart to dynamic paintings.

Packed with inspiration for picture-perfect paintings, this book will help take advantage of your reference photos while avoiding common pitfalls.making your camera as valuable an art tool as your brushes and paints.

The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet

The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet Review

In 1909 the French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn launched a monumentally ambitious project: to produce a color photographic record of human life on Earth. An internationalist and pacifist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome--the world's first portable, true-color photographic process--to create a global photographic archive that would promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. Over the next twenty years, he sent a group of photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, amassing more than 72,000 images. Until recently his collection was all but forgotten. Now, a century after he began his "Archives of the Planet" project, this book--richly illustrated in color throughout--and the BBC series it follows are bringing Kahn's dazzling early twentieth-century pictures to a wide audience for the first time, and putting color into what we usually think of as a monochrome world.

Kahn's photographers captured times, places, and people we simply do not expect to see in color photographs. They documented age-old cultures on the brink of being changed forever by war, modernization, and Westernization, recording the last years of Ireland's traditional Celtic villages and the late days of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. They photographed First World War soldiers in their trenches as well as the postwar celebrations in London. In the course of their travels, they also took the earliest color photographs in countries as varied as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States.

After being financially ruined in the Great Depression, Kahn was forced to bring his project to a premature end, but today his collection of early color photographs is recognized as one of the world's most important. The Dawn of the Color Photograph makes it easy to see why.

The Cake Decorator's Motif Bible: 150 Fabulous Fondant Designs with Easy-to-Follow Charts and Photographs

The Cake Decorator's Motif Bible: 150 Fabulous Fondant Designs with Easy-to-Follow Charts and Photographs Review

The Cake Decorator's Motif Bible: 150 Fabulous Fondant Designs with Easy-to-Follow Charts and Photographs Feature

• The Cake Decorator's Motif Bible presents 150 foolproof and fabulous fondant designs to ...
• 256 pages, concealed wirebound hardcover
• Dimensions: 11"H × 8½"W

150 tempting designs with no-fail instructions.

The Cake Decorator's Motif Bible presents 150 foolproof motifs to create that special cake for any occasion, from simple and fun to elegant and elaborate. Using easy-to-follow instructions and illustrated templates, the book takes the home baker through all the steps: from making the right amount of fondant or marzipan, to choosing and sizing a design and transferring it to the cake.

The book includes icing and fondant recipes, seasonal designs, patterns and borders, 3-D models, marzipan fruits and figures, and sugar flowers. Features include:

• 188-page design directory
• Large full-color photograph of the finished motif
• Black-line template size guides
• Dough gauge showing how much fondant to make
• At-a-glance color listing in recipes
• Flat, low-relief, three-dimensional and piped motifs
• Tips on application
• Mixing and matching motifs
• Designs graded for difficulty.

The Cake Decorator's Motif Bible is wiro-bound for easy lay-flat use. It provides innovative inspiration with complete and truly fail-safe instructions for unforgettable results every time.

(20080301)

Art of Handpainting Photographs

Art of Handpainting Photographs Review

The tradition of coloring photographs is almost as old as the medium itself, arising from the desire to soften the starkness of early photos. Handcoloring is very popular again, and this lovely book makes it easy to see why. Art photographer Dorskind clearly explains how she achieves her evocative and atmospheric "photopaintings," from materials and color basics, to composing a photo, to presenting and storing your work. Though the finished product may look like something only a professional photographer could produce, the technique is actually quite straightforward. And though the supplies are specialized, they are found at many art- and photo-supply stores, or can be ordered from a supplier in the book's resource guide. --Amy Handy

How To Draw Lifelike Portraits From Photographs Revised: 20 step-by-step demonstrations with bonus DVD

How To Draw Lifelike Portraits From Photographs Revised: 20 step-by-step demonstrations with bonus DVD Review

How To Draw Lifelike Portraits From Photographs Revised

Lee Hammond is back and better than ever, featuring all new step-by-step demonstrations that will have you drawing your best portraits yet. Her secret to success? The "Hammond Blended Pencil Technique," a proven method of shading and blending that captures the soft tones and dimensional shapes of skin, hair and clothing.

Focusing first on individual facial features, you'll follow her easy three-step process for realistically rendering even the most challenging eyes, noses and mouths. From there, you'll use Lee's basic grid techniques to master proportion and put the features together, then gradually blend and shade your way to amazingly lifelike portraits. It's that simple!

This completely revised and updated edition of her bestselling book features people of all ages, personalities and ethnicities so you can find the specialized guidance you're looking for. There's even a bonus instructional DVD. Simply use your own reference photos and follow along one step at a time, or copy Lee's demonstrations.

Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930

Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 Review

"Cadavers, camera, action!" (The New York Times Book Review). From the advent of photography in the 19th and into the 20th century, medical students, often in secrecy, took photographs of themselves with the cadavers that they dissected: their first patients. Featuring 138 of these historic photographs and illuminating essays by two experts on the subject, Dissection reveals a startling piece of American history. Sherwin Nuland, MD, said this is "a truly unique and important book [that] documents a period in medical education in a way that is matched by no other existing contribution." And Mary Roach said Dissection "is the most extraordinary book I have ever seen--the perfect coffee table book for all the households where I'd most like to be invited for coffee."

Raptors of the West: Captured in Photographs

Raptors of the West: Captured in Photographs Review

With their striking looks, keen vision, and hunting prowess, the birds of prey eagles, hawks, falcons, and owls have long captured the human imagination. Now Raptors of the West, a collection of some of most remarkable and action-packed raptor photographs ever taken, can inspire your own imagination to take flight. This book, the latest collabora-tion by award-winning photographers Rob Palmer and Nick Dunlop and author/photographer Kate Davis, is a glorious photographic ode to the forty-four birds of prey that roam the skies of the American West.
Instead of grouping the birds by type owls with owls, hawks with hawks the book has chapters arranged by the habitat type and region where each bird spends the breeding season. Whether you re enjoying these pages from the comfort of your own armchair or taking a trip to the field you can see which birds to look for in that area Swainson s Hawks soar over grasslands next to Prairie Falcons while Cooper s Hawks share mature forests with Flammulated Owls. While the 400-plus stunning color photographs are enough to set this book apart on their own, Davis s informative and entertaining text completes the picture.

Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America

Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America Review

Brian Vanden Brink is one of America's most sought-after architectural photographers. He is also drawn to the mystery and unexpected beauty found in abandoned architecture. Here Vanden Brink captures and illuminates in stunning black and white images abandoned structures such as mills, bridges, grain elevators, churches, and storefronts-structures that once were important and useful. With text by historic preservation expert Howard Mansfield, this collection of photos grants permanence to places that may soon vanish forever.