Traditional Art - Books & Resources

The Traditional Art of the Mask: Carving a Transformation Mask: This is rare look into the traditional ways of creating the beautiful masks that have brought such admiration to the native American carvers of the Pacific Northwest.

Digital Art Studio: Techniques for Combining Inkjet Printing with Traditional Art Materials (Paperback): This book covers the basic processes for preparing commercially available surfaces (canvas and watercolor and printmaking papers) and custom surfaces (handmade papers, wood, leather, and antique fabrics). More advanced methods are covered, including transferring digital images to absorbent surfaces and transferring digital images to three-dimensional surfaces.

Oaxacan Ceramics: Traditional Folk Art by Oaxacan Women (Paperback): This celebration of Mexican ceramics combines a gallery of more than one hundred stunning photographs with an insightful text that illuminates the artistry and the artists--all of whom are women. The fanciful, brightly colored works spring from the rich imaginations of rural women drawing on enduring religion, mythology, and themes from their everyday lives.


Chinese Brush Painting: A Hands-On Introduction to the Traditional Art (Hardcover): Presented in an easy-to-understand way that is perfect for children, Chinese Brush Painting stays true to the traditional principles of the art as it explains how to create beautiful, unique, and creative brush paintings at home or in the classroom. Using more than 35 hands-on painting activities, Chinese Brush Painting and its array of projects will serve as an excellent introduction for young artists ages nine and up.

Creative Paint Workshop for Mixed-Media Artists: Experimental Techniques for Composition, Layering, Texture, Imagery, and Encaustic: A workshop-style book, oriented to the wide community of crafters and artists including those interested in paint, surface design, mixed media, and collage, which explores a wide variety of innovative and experimental paint techniques.

Rethinking Acrylic: Radical Solutions For Exploiting The World's Most Versatile Medium: Takes an in-depth approach to the most popular techniques with 27 mini-demonstrations and 10 full demonstrations that show how to incorporate the featured techniques into completed paintings.

Painting Abstracts: Ideas, Projects and Techniques: Full instructions for 65 abstract paintings are provided in this guide that urges beginners to plunge right in, learning about composition, theme, and design while they paint.

Acrylic Revolution: New Tricks and Techniques for Working with the World's Most Versatile Medium: Acrylic Revolution is your essential, all-in-one guide for acrylic painting techniques and more. It features over 101 ways to break through the boundaries of conventional painting and re-define the creative potential of this all-purpose medium.

Photography - Books & Resources

The Digital Photography Book (Paperback): This isn't a book of theory—it isn't full of confusing jargon and detailed concepts: this is a book of which button to push, which setting to use, when to use them, and nearly two hundred of the most closely guarded photographic "tricks of the trade" to get you shooting dramatically better-looking, sharper, more colorful, more professional-looking photos with your digital camera every time you press the shutter button.

Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition) (Paperback): For serious amateur photographers who already shoot perfectly focused, accurately exposed images but want to be more creative with a camera, here’s the book to consult. More than seventy techniques, both popular and less-familiar approaches, are covered in detail, including advanced exposure, bounced flash and candlelight, infrared, multiple images, soft-focus effects, unusual vantage points, zooming, and other carefully chosen ways to enhance photographs.

Portrait Photography: Secrets of Posing & Lighting (A Lark Photography Book) (Paperback): With easy-to-follow instructions and detailed photo sequences showing how to arrange lights and lighting accessories, this carefully structured course teaches all the fundamentals of portraiture, as well as a host of other creative techniques. It sets out everything the amateur needs to know to create a wide range of styles, from choosing the right equipment to composing the background to placing and positioning the subject for maximum effect.

The Betterphoto Guide to Digital Photography (Amphoto Guide Series) (Paperback): This practical, lesson-based workbook gives readers a step-by-step tutorial in getting bright, crisp, beautiful pictures from their digital cameras every time. Learn about exposure, file formats and quality settings, low-light photography, digital filters and white balance, composition and lens choice, manipulating images, printing, and much more, all in a handy, bring-along format.

The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2: In Volume 2, Scott adds entirely new chapters packed with Plain English tips on using flash, shooting close up photography, travel photography, shooting people, and even how to build a studio from scratch, where he demystifies the process so anyone can start taking pro-quality portraits today!

The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos: The Photographer's Eye shows how anyone can develop the ability to see and shoot great digital photographs. The book explores all the traditional approaches to composition and design, but crucially, it also addresses the new digital technique of shooting in the knowledge that a picture will later be edited, manipulated, or montaged to result in a final image that may be very different from the one seen in the viewfinder.

Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision (Voices That Matter): Both instructional and inspirational, Within the Frame helps you on your photographic journey to make better images of the places and people you love, whether they are around the world or in your own backyard.

Mix Media - Books & Resources

DK Art School: An Introduction To Mixed Media (Paperback): An Introduction to Mixed Media is a practical guide to a range of artistic techniques. More than 300 photographs guide the beginner through a series of exercises designed to teach all the essentials of working in mixed media.

Mixed-Media Self-Portraits: Inspiration & Techniques (Paperback): This book is about showcasing different media and encouraging crafters to reveal at least one part of their personalities through art. Exercises follow, using digital images, a “who lives here” quiz, color symbolism, even caricatures to warm up visual inspiration.

Exploring the Latest Trends in Mixed Media Arts: Projects & Techniques-Volume I (Paperback): 91 color pages full of innovative projects & fun techniques.

Creative Paint Workshop for Mixed-Media Artists: Experimental Techniques for Composition, Layering, Texture, Imagery, and Encaustic (Spiral-bound): A workshop-style book, oriented to the wide community of crafters and artists including those interested in paint, surface design, mixed media, and collage, which explores a wide variety of innovative and experimental paint techniques.


1,000 Artist Journal Pages: Personal Pages and Inspirations (1000 Series): Journaling has seeped into popular culture in a big way and this collection provides a wide array of ideas, techniques and themes to inspire and inform mixed media and journaling enthusiasts.

Printmaking + Mixed Media: Simple Techniques and Projects for Paper and Fabric: Reinterpreting traditional methods, this resource presents creative, affordable, and accessible techniques for mixed-media artists and printmakers of all experience levels looking to incorporate printed images onto paper or fabric.

Creative Awakenings: Envisioning the Life of Your Dreams Through Art: Utilize your creativity to manifest your personal intention. Work in the spirit of the laws of attraction to visualize the life of your dreams. Follow the journey of twelve artists, each who will set a personal dream or intention.

Collage Journeys: A Practical Guide to Creating Personal Artwork: Collage can be more, much more, than just cutting and pasting. It can be a wonderful art form and a means of self-expression. Collage Journeys presents a series of innovative workshop assignments, each designed to relate the technique and format of a collage to its subject.

Sculpture & 3D Artwork - Books & Resources

Encyclopedia of Sculpture Techniques (Paperback): From accelerators (chemicals that speed up the hardening process) to workmate (a portable workbench popular in many studios), this key reference contains all a working sculptor needs to know!

Sculpture: Principles and Practice (Paperback): This authoritative introduction to sculpture covers forms of sculpture, how to construct an armature, build a model stand, carving, much more. Invaluable for beginner but skilled sculptors will find its broad scope useful.

From Clay to Bronze: A Studio Guide to Figurative Sculpture (Paperback): Going beyond theory straight to hands-on practice, this studio workbook is devoted to the creation of a large, realistic bronze figure, from initial studies through the complex processes of enlarging, modeling, molding, casting, and finishing.

Modeling the Head in Clay (Practical Craft Books) (Paperback): Renowned contemporary sculptor Bruno Lucchesi takes a single life-size head through all the stages of rough in, modeling, refining the surface, and finishing and texturing, enabling the reader to see exactly how he positions and models every detail.

500 Ceramic Sculptures: Contemporary Practice, Singular Works (500 Series): The successful 500 series shines a spotlight on today’s most breathtaking ceramic sculptures. Selected from more than 8,000 entries by the distinguished art critic, historian, and professor Glen R. Brown—an elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva—these exquisite works will inspire both beginning and professional ceramists, as well as collectors and enthusiasts.

The Art of Polymer Clay Creative Surface Effects: Techniques and Projects Featuring Transfers, Stamps, Stencils, Inks, Paints, Mediums, and More: Polymer clay has grown and grown and grown in popularity since the publication of Donna Kato’s best-selling The Art of Polymer Clay in 1997. And there have been so many technical advances, too. Now poly-diva Donna Kato presents an all-new look at one of crafters’ all-time favorite mediums.

Cartoons & Comics - Books & Resources

Muscles in Motion : Figure Drawing for the Comic Book Artist (Paperback): With more than 800 action drawings taken directly from the sketchbooks of legendary artist Glenn Fabry, plus Fabry's remarkable commentary on those drawings, this is the single best book on action anatomy for comic-book artists, beginning, intermediate, and advanced.

Draw 50 Famous Cartoons: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Your Favorite Cartoon Characters (Books for Young Readers) (Paperback) Step-by-step instructions for drawing 50 famous cartoon characters--both human and animal.

Big Book of Cartooning (Paperback): The Big Book of Cartooning is a fun, comprehensive, easy-to-use guide to the basic techniques of cartooning. In his Big Book, Blitz explains the process of drawing cartoons with detailed chapters that cover everything from the selection of paper and pencils to sketching animals and portraits.

Comic Artist's Photo Reference - People & Poses: Book/CD Set with 1000+ Color Images (Comic Artists Reference): The ultimate reference for comic artists, this unique book/CD set is packed with photos of men and women in basic and dramatic superhero poses uniquely tailored to the comic artist’s needs.

Dynamic Figure Drawing (Practical Art Books): In this book, Bruce Hogarth, one of the founders of the School of Visual Arts in New York, introduces his own revolutionary system of figure drawing, which makes it possible to visualize and accurately render the forms of the human body from every conceivable point of view. 300+ drawings & diagrams.

Drawing Cutting Edge Anatomy: The Ultimate Reference for Comic Book Artists: The follow-up title to the hit title Drawing Cutting Edge Comics, which has been translated into seven languages, this drawing tutorial shows artists how to draw the exaggerated musculature of super-sized figures in action poses.

Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist: How to Draw the New Streamlined Look of Action-Adventure Comics!: In clear step-by-step illustrations and text, he shows: how to draw streamlined figures in poses; body types and muscles; the mechanics of facial expression; how to know which muscles to eliminate in a simplified drawing; grouping muscles; muscle contours versus bone contours; muscles in classic comic-book poses like flying and punching; and more.

Digital Art - Books & Resources

Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-On-One (Paperback): Whether you're a first-timer looking to learn Photoshop, or a seasoned user interested in the groundbreaking features of CS4, Deke's conversational style and carefully structured lessons guide you through everything you need to know to get up and running, and then takes you well into mastery.

Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature (Paperback): When Photoshop guru Matt Kloskowski was asked why he wrote this book, he replied, “It’s simple: I wanted to write the Photoshop book that I wished was around when I was learning Photoshop”. You’ve always known that layers were the key to understanding Photoshop, and now you have a resource to show you exactly how.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book (Paperback): This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe Photoshop CS3--written by the experts at Adobe Systems' is ideal for beginning users who want to learn key Photoshop concepts and techniques, while readers who already have some experience with Photoshop can use this book to learn Photoshop CS3's more advanced features and newest tools. Using clear, step-by-step, project-based lessons, each chapter walks readers through the creation of a specific project, with each chapter building on the reader's growing knowledge of the program, while review questions at the end of each chapter reinforce the skills learned in each lesson.

Exploring 3D Modeling with Cinema 4D R9 (Design Exploration) (Paperback): Veteran Cinema 4D user and teacher Tony Alley introduces the key concepts of building 3D models using C4D. Explaining the technology in clear, design-oriented terms, Exploring 3D Modeling with Cinema 4D covers basic modeling techniques, working with colors and textures, lighting, cinematography, and rendering.

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter): Scott Kelby, the best-selling Photoshop author in the world today, once again takes this book to a whole new level as he uncovers the latest, most important, and most exciting new Adobe Photoshop CS4 techniques for digital photographers. This major update to his award-winning, record-breaking book does something for digital photographers that’s never been done before—it cuts through the bull and shows you exactly “how to do it.”

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter): If you're one of those people who learns best by actually doing the projects yourself; who learns best without all the complicated technical explanations and confusing jargon, and if you really want to start using Lightroom today to unlock the productivity secrets of "The new digital photography workflow,"---there is no faster, more "straight-to-the-point" or more fun way to learn than this groundbreaking new book, and you are absolutely going to love it!

The Photoshop Elements 7 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter): This book is not a bunch of theories; it doesn’t challenge you to come up with your own settings or figure things out on your own. Instead, it does something that virtually no other Elements book has ever done—it tells you flat-out which settings to use, when to use them, and why.

Photoshop Elements 7: The Missing Manual: As always, author Barbara Brundage lets you know which features work well, which don't, and why -- all with a bit of wit and good humor. Dive into Adobe's outstanding photo editor and find out why this Missing Manual is the bestselling book on the topic.