5 comments about Perspective Drawing Handbook (Dover Art Instruction).

1. I was trying to draw a picture of a building with an extended cover over the driveway from a kind of different point of view and this book really helped me out. Good, understandable info on perspective drawing.



2. Please don't buy this inaccurate text. It has at least one major flaw. The author incorrectly claims that the horizon is always at eye level. It's easy to see that's false. Walk into the Grand Canyon and you'll notice that the horizon is well above eye level.



3. This is currently my favorite perspective book! If I listed my Top 5, it would have to be: Perspective Drawing Handbook; Perspective Made Easy; Perspective! for Comic Book Artists; Basic Perspective Drawing: A Visual Guide, 4th edition; and then Creative Perspective for Artists and Illustrators. Perspective Drawing Handbook is my favorite because it's clear, concise, slim & to the point. It's very enlightening! In my opinion, Joseph D' Amelio was a genius in his understanding of perspective & his ability to communicate this to others. Because this book is so slim, clear & reasonably priced, I would highly recommend this to anyone & *everyone* interested in learning about perspective-based drawing. Even if it doesn't become your favorite overall, it's certainly worth having in your collection, as perspective is such a difficult topic that it's really best to buy a number of books. And if you're going to buy a number of books, it would help to know which are the *best* while at the same time being reasonably priced. This is at the top of my list! Three-point perspective *is* covered here, although he mostly avoids this term and instead calls this "looking up & down". It's simplistic in its approach, but that's what great teachers are about: taking difficult concepts & making them easy to understand. The writing can be a little stiff, but this book relies mostly on visuals, which is exactly what I prefer! There really aren't that many words here, especially when compared to another book I recently reviewed: Creative Perspective for Artists and Illustrators. If you think Perspective Drawing Handbook is a bit too wordy, than you'd definitely want to stay away from Creative Perspective! Perspective Drawing Handbook: my highest recommendation!



4. Too much text, not enough drawing. I much prefer Perspective: space and design
   by Louise Bowen Ballinger



5. "PERSPECTIVE DRAWING HANDBOOK" by Joseph D`Amelio
   
   Amelio really packed this book with well-illustrated covering of Perspective in Black & White. Better still, D`Amelio manages to keep text down to the bare essentials, preferring to illustrate the point rather than describe it. Fascinating. Nicely put together, and very concise at 96 pages. I really liked it.
   
   Suggested retail at $8.95 this is a good reference, and eminently affordable. It seemed quite deserving of FIVE STARS for making an obscure subject clear to the general public with a direct, no-nonsense approach. What Stephen Rogers Peck does for anatomy, is what D'Amelio does for teaching PERSPECTIVE.

5 comments about 4000 Flower & Plant Motifs: A Sourcebook.

1. I'm an avid embroiderer, always looking for the perfect design to embellish a cardigan or pillowtop. McCallum's collection offers plenty of ideas and serves as a springboard for some of my own. I imagine this would be an equally essential tool for many other types of hobbyists. This one is nice just to leaf through, too -- it's very well arranged. I'm tempted to order his other books right away, but there's plenty to work with right here.



2. My wife asked for this for her birthday. She absolutely loves it. So much so that we recently purchased 7 more as gifts for her friends in different crafting groups. She insists that 4000 Flower and Plant Motifs has inspired her with tons of quilting/craft ideas. This book is a great gift.
   
   Sam Hendricks, author of "Fantasy Football Guidebook: Your Comrehensive Guide to Playing Fantasy Football" and "Fantasy Football Almanac"



3. I love this book for the quilting designs it inspires. If you're stuck for ideas, open McCallum's book and start drawing.



4. I have a collection of books on designs and historical motifs. This is one of the most useful. I'm using it to create designs for decorating pottery.



5. This book has found a permanent spot in my home, namely, on my desk, where I do all my hobbies. It has loads of great ideas that I've already used. Can't wait for the author's next book --apparantly its a sourcebook on animal designs.

5 comments about Creativity for Graphic Designers.

1. I'm so glad my professor made this a required textbook! Mark Oldach's insights into the process of concept development are so helpful. This should be in the graphic designer's library. I will return to this book again and again!



2. This book packs a lot of punch. It's written in an easy to understand format that is very creative with handwritten notes from the author in the margins. It's a great source of ideas with the numerous full-color case studies that are included. This book does an excellent job of providing graphic designers with step-by-step instructions on how to ask the right questions at the initial client meeting, go back to the office and download the information, then take the information and begin generating ideas, and finally, select which ideas should be developed. It's an invaluable tool for new designers.



3. I love my mac, but I also love not using it. This book tells a lot about a designers prosess outside the mac. I found this sentence in the book: "Designers have a responsebility to do what they are paid to - design .... To many designers use the (mac) for a substitute for thinking". So right!



4. Unlike design books filled w/ eye-candy & no direction on processes, Mark Oldach steers the reader through well defined concepts & thoughts. An excellent book for all designers who wish to communicate through design.



5. I found this book to be very helpful in getting you to think of the box. Instead of being like a picture book with not much information, it tells you how to come up with ideas and explains the process of making a good design. This is a great book to have if you already have those picture books with just designs and need something to help you with actually creating your own designs.

1 comments about Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 (Jewish Museum).

1. This is a magnificent artbook enriched by breakthrough studies on the most important movement in post-war American art, namely Abstract Expressionism (and its offshoots like color-field painting). Based on the intellectual rivalry between the two most famous critics of the period, Clement Greenberg (the advocate of abstraction, who insisted on the importance of the work of art versus the creative process, abstract art being the only valid modern form of art) and Harold Rosenberg (who coined the expression "action painting" in a 1952 article in Artnews and to whom what counted was the act of creating, more than the end product) it enables the reader to discover some of the most canonical works of the movement, by De Kooning, Pollock, Newman and many others, lavishly illustrated.
   
   The book accompanies an exhibition held at the Jewish Museum in NYC and is a trove of information and documents on the roots, the influences, the governing ideas, the artists' personalities and their reactions to the various opinions stated by Greenberg and Rosenberg on their art but also on the state of contemporary culture.
   
   The reproductions of facsimile of letters are especially interesting, such as the ones Clyfford Still sent to Harold Rosenberg, first urging him to get into art criticism and then condemning him for doing so ("I am deeply disappointed" he ends up writing).
   
   A landmark exhibition enlightened by this rich catalogue (a highlight is Irving Sandler's article on the convergences and divergences between Greenberg and Rosenberg)which I strongly recommend.

5 comments about Big Book of Cartooning.

1. The book was better than I expected, and arrived before I expected it to.
   Great buy. Thanks. :D



2. This book is so much fun. I'm a digital artist and use Illustrator as my tool. I learned so many techniques from this book. The pictures are big and bold and the author teaches without making you feel like a novice.



3. I bought this book for my husband and he loves it. He is constantly drawing little pictures for me. It will certainly bring out the inner artist in you. This book is easy to follow along with.



4. A casual glance through this book originally made me think it looked too cutesy and not what I wanted. I'll still say that too many of his characters and examples are cutesy, and rather stilted. But there's a lot of excellent material here. I found several tips that I (so far) haven't seen in several other books. I've had several nagging questions: Exactly how do I get things done? How is a finished cartoon created? On what size and kind of paper, using what tools? Blitz walks you through all of that stuff. The section on drawing backgrounds and perspective was also really handy.
   
   I'd say this is the single best book I've seen to get started on cartooning. Even if you want to draw some other, very different style (like, some kind of dark Batman comic or something), if you have little or no cartooning experience, this book will be helpful.



5. I don't consider my self to possess any artistic abilities when it comes to drawing. I wanted to enter a contest on YouTube where I had to draw pictures of things. I got this book. Followed the easy to use instructions, drew my pictures, entered the contest and won the $5,000 grand prize. I would definitely say I got my money's worth from this book and much much more. Highly recommended.

5 comments about Marker Magic: The Rendering Problem Solver for Designers.

1. perfect condition. got here right away! Cost less than the college bookstore. I will definately use amazon again!



2. I was impressed with the writing style of this book, it was not boring and provided several full page examples as well as techniques for making it in the designing field. I was assigned this as a textbook, but I am pleased to review that it is a fantastic book!



3. I was very disappointed in the content of this book. Fully half of this (quite thin) book is taken up with profiles of professional renderers, showing examples of their work with brief comments about what they did to create a drawing--nothing instructional, just general remarks on the finished product. The remainder is the "problem-solving" promised by the title, but there's just so little there--a few techniques, each given a page or two with little or no step-by-step instruction, and nothing to connect the disparate "problems" together. The overall feeling is of a book that's been padded out with artist bios to make up for the scantiness of the "problem solving" material.
   
   I'm not sure who the audience for this book is--obviously some people like it, since it has some good reviews. For me, as an interior design student wanting to learn techniques for marker rendering, it was not useful. I felt it was a poor value and priced very out of line with the quantity and quality of the content.
   
   For interior design and architecture students who need instruction in rendering, a much better value and more comprehensive instruction can be found in the book "Color Drawing: Design Drawing Skills and Techniques for Architects, Landscape Architects, and Interior Designers" by Michael Doyle.



4. This book is helpful if you are trying to find your style of marker rendering it has a lot of helpful information and examples.



5. This book was very helpful in showing me different rendering techniques used by varying artists. From minimalist, neutral shading to full blown, vibrant color renderings, this book covered them all.
   Great tips on which marker colors to use to achieve a particular 'look'...such as glass, metal, wood, etc.
   Highly recommend.

5 comments about Graphic Design School, Third Edition.

1. I really enjoyed this book, but I wouldn't say that it actually teaches you the 'how to's' of graphic design. On the other hand the book is fantastic at showing real-life examples as well as all of the many applications of graphic design which assists one to decide which path to focus on.



2. Graphic Design School has some useful tools for beginners, but more than half of the book is outdated. Graphic Design School has a few sections on design theory, and more than half the book are tutorials in photoshop, illustrator, etc.
   
   The book boasts a bit how today you cannot talk about or teach graphic desing without addressing technology, This is where the book faulters. Technology tchanges so quickly now that this book's many tutorials end up being very obsolete (pre adobe CS). It would have been nice if this came with a CD that could get updates for tutorials, etc. A book like this needs to make a new edition atleast every 2 years to keep up.



3. Loaded with illustrations, graphics and layouts, this intoduction to graphic design covers basics that will "charge" your creative batteries.



4. Yes the book is visual. Yes it has examples of other student's work. Yes there is helpful information in it.

   HOWEVER, having worked in the field for more than 10 years, I find this book simplistic, and frankly the samples of work included are not very good.

   Why would I want to emulate design I don't like?

   I found the examples to be dated, and I found the book lacking in teaching skills that designers really need to know.

   If this is a fair representation of what is being taught in design school, we are in a very sad place.

   There are so many other GOOD books out there. Buy one of those.




5. I have met many web designers who have never learned the basic skills of graphic design. "Graphic design School" is the best book out there today on learning the techniques and tools for basic graphic design practices. Swann covers the 'Language of Design,' 'Principles and Techniques' and 'Commercial Practice.' Short, concise and beautifully illustrated to relay the importance of knowing this craft for a solid design foundation.

   Web colors are not mentioned, nor do you see anything about browser selection nor any debate over screen size. What you do see are the brief introductions to corporate design, logos, editorial design and packaging. All basics to build on for a graphic design career, including web design.

5 comments about Jenny Saville.

1. The book opens with two short essays and a reprint from The Independent, January 30 1994, which is a statement by the artist about her work and her approach; in addition there is an interview with Jenny Saville, May 2005, in which she further describes her approach to painting. The book includes a Biography and a Bibliography. Of the text by far the more interesting are the two in the artist's own words, far more down to earth and revealing, the two short essays border on the pretentious.
   
   There is no question that the book is beautifully illustrated with around 85 full-colour images. However it is worth noting how that breaks down. There are 32 paintings illustrated, and while a few approach full-page size many are smaller, unnecessarily so as there is plenty of room on the page; these picture need to be as large as possible considering the actual size of the paintings. About 20 of the illustrations are of a detail of the paintings, these images are full page or even double-page bleed illustrations; they are very informative although one or two seem so enlarged as to become abstract images in their own right. The remaining 33 or so images, mostly double-page bleed illustrations, are photographs of extracts from the artists notes and sketch books, her sources such as books or photographs, and views of her studio; however again one or two go beyond being informative and are simply arty pictures for their own sake.
   
   This is a well produced book, the illustrations show the artist's work well, and convey an idea of the texture of the paint. However overall I feel it is lacking, the attempt at a showy display and the cleaver photography detract from the paintings, and apart from the artist's own words the text is insubstantial. FIVE STARS for the artist, but the book could be a lot better.



2. I pre-ordered this book and when it arrived, I was not disappointed. I pored over it for a few days before bringing it to the studio to show the artists who work in my studio. They were equally excited by this collection, but then what do we know? We just make our total livings at making artwork. It is our day job!
   
   Sorry that I can't look into my crystal ball to see what she'll be like at age 80 but right now, she is breathing real life and power into contemporary realism. This book shows ample reason why Saville is celebrated and her detractors are virtual unknowns.
   
   The best always rise to the top...always.



3. bought it at moma-snatched it up. love this painter-she is extremely talented. good book too. missed the last gagosian show:(



4. This book is top-notch. The reproductions are very well done, and there are tons of close-up shots of individual paintings showing Saville's brush work. I would highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in contemporary art, portraiture, or figure painting. As a painting student, it is great to be able to see the whole painting on one page and then examine a series of close-ups and even shots of the artist's reference materials. Very informative. Oh, and the paintings are stunningly beautiful as well!!!



5. I was extremely happy with this book. It was a reccomendation and I wouldn't have found her without that!
   Wonderful full colour pictures and interesting essays.

5 comments about 100 Days Of Monsters (with DVD).

1. Once upon a time, a control enthusiast with a pen drew himself a monster--and the rest is history.
   
   You can test-flight this book at Bucher's site, www.dailymonster.com, where all 200 of the monsters he eventually released still live--going to their jobs, having their babies, reading and writing and dancing and taking over the world--doing all the things monsters do. I encourage you to do so, and then buy this book.
   
   Someday someone you are talking to will rail against the web, talk about all the terrible things on it, all the bad people. Then you can point to 100 Days of Monsters, and you can say, "Things like THIS--people from all over the world sharing a creative moment, interacting to make something beautiful and funny and playful--how would you make something like THIS happen, if not for the internet?" And if not for, it goes without saying, Stefan G. Bucher and his band of authors.
   
   I came to the game too late to be part of the book--but oh, it was a lovely thing to have my child come downstairs every morning and say, "Mom! Did you monster yet?"
   
   What a wonderful time. I thank you, Stefan. You did good. You didn't just talk the talk, you walked the walk. You followed your heart, and it shows. :)



2. 100 Days of Monsters is a fun journey through 100 days of artist Stefan G. Bucher's life. Each day starts with a great drawing of a "Monster," and includes stories and comments from many of his avid readers. Each monster is endearing in its own way, and Stefan's unique way of creating these characters, only makes them more endearing.
   I highly recommend this book. Just think of it as a really good picture book for adults!



3. This is a great book. Very well put together. The little unexpected tidbits of an off the wall comment here and some all but hidden messages in the the fine print there make it not your everyday, ordinary book. This one is fun in all respects. The Monsters are all distinct personalities and the stories accent their lives. I love it!!



4. My friend would go to the blog site and she would make up stories about the picture's. Not being as artistic as she is I thought oh well. But once I started to get into Stefan Bucher's method's and thought process I realized how great it was to read the book. Thank You Stefan Bucher. ( please look for
   Sequena/Annie Nordmark in the book my friend writes great stories for the pictures )Thanks



5. This book was just a neat thing to check out everyday. Still. It gives me a smile every time he starts with just one blot of ink and spreads it, from there it becomes a living, personified, under the bed madness!, type creature that lurks off every new page. Its grand, most definitely worth checking out!!!

5 comments about Creative Cloth Doll Faces: Using Paints, Pastels, Fibers, Beading, Collage, and Sculpting Techniques.

1. Another wonderful cloth doll book by my favorite author in this area. Great illustrations. Thank you!



2. Excellent book! Great instructions on how to draw a face on cloth and how to paint and highlight facial features. I haven't made my first doll yet, but I have it on my "to do" list. I really like Patti Medaris Culea and Anne Hesse's dolls as they seem so realistic with the beautiful colors and embellishments. I make handsewn beaded jewelry and I look forward to making my first cloth doll creation. One of the things I really like about Patti's books is she also includes other dollmakers work so you can visually see all the different styles of the designers and it makes your own creative juices start to flow.



3. Creative Cloth Doll Faces: Using Paints, Pastels, Fibers, Beading, Collage, and Sculpting Techniques
   Using many photos and easy to follow directions and diagrams, Patti has reduced the terrifying and difficult task many feel unable to acheive to its basics and allows the artist in you to come alive!
   
   The book has dolls from a number of different artists and demonstrates each of their approach to making the face come alive! The tips are portable and not limited to just Patti's own dolls, but ones you can save in your head for future use on a new project.
   
   I highly recommend this book for both beginning dollmakers as well as for advanced artisans who want to improve their work or techniques.



4. That's what this book is good at. Easy to follow directions, great patterns, that can be changed to fit - your doll. But most of all, a easy way to get that face looking, like a face. Not a blob of colors, where the eyes are not in the right place, or are too big on one side, and smaller on the other. This book also has great tips for those who are more experianced. The face intimadates most begainers, and some who have expriance too. And this makes it fun to come up with your own doll face. Where you'll know it will look like a face. Enjoy - this books is tons of fun. You'll find yourself going back to it, again and again.



5. Creative Cloth Doll Faces is delightful, inspirational and visually stimulating. It takes the idea of an art doll to a new level of elegance. The directions are easy to understand, even for a beginner. It is amazing how much diversity can be made from one basic face. Each artist gives the face his/her own creative identity. I highly recommend this book to folks who wish to get into the making of elegant art dolls. Bravo for Patti Medaris Culea for a fine tutorial that includes paints, pastels, fibers, beading, collage and sculpting techniques.