Natural History Painting: With the Eden Project |  | Authors: Meriel Thurstan, Rosie Martin
Publisher: Batsford
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 406649
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 144
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.6 x 0.7
ISBN: 1906388490
Dewey Decimal Number: 750
EAN: 9781906388492
ASIN: 1906388490
Publication Date: August 4, 2009
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Product Description
With the expert instruction of two award-winning artists who specialize in capturing the primal essence of the natural world, anyone can create lifelike and unerringly accurate portraits of plants, flowers, and wildlife. This book offers ideas on finding an inspirational subject, from natural outdoor settings to local zoos and museums; advice on composition; and techniques for using a range of materials. From learning to recreate the subtle shimmer of a fish’s scales to capturing the graceful curve a flower, every step in the creative process is explained through color photographs and illuminating text.
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| Customer Reviews:
Excellent instruction and wonderful exercises September 20, 2009
bonnie
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I ordered this book, not knowing what was really inside. I am pleasantly surprised. As an artist for over 40 years, I know that the materials information is excellent. It gives you choices on what to buy, shows you the difference between different brands, tells you how to set up and care for your equipment, even gives you exercises in becoming familiar with the different pencils, brushes and paints. Next, it tells you how to approach a subject, what you should know about the subject and where to find it, even has you list adjectives that you need to keep in mind as you draw a subject, then takes you through an exercise that is really a journey of drawing a subject, the steps from blocking in to refinement to the final shading and highlighting, including texture. It tells how to start a sketchbook and has an exercise, like in all the chapters. The chapter on color theory and mixing is fantastic. It shows you how to mix all the colors you need from the 6 paint colors recommended in the materials chapter, and shows color pages of exercises of allot of color mixes. Every exercise is really wonderful for both the beginner and advanced artist that needs help with natural history painting. It even includes directions and and an exercise in mixing those numerous greens that are so essential in depicting nature accurately. In the chapter on painting, the examples are in watercolor, the most widely used medium of natural history painters. It even illustrates, in color, the most common mistakes on handling your water and gives you exercises for practice on handling water and paint for the best results. There is a nice chapter on examples and exercises on handling texture. Then the author uses the rest of the book to address numerous natural history subjects, each with it's own chapter, i.e. rocks, bird and their feathers, bugs, sea-life and spirals, bones, a great chapter on iridescence, and finishes up with a chapter on display and mimicry. The last chapter encourages you to use your knowledge in lots of other ways, from sculpture and mathematics to applied and fine art to decorating a gorgeous wedding cake through to drawing and painting greeting cards. Anyone interested in natural history would enjoy this book, but for those of us who are fans of natural history books like "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Anne Dillard that have been itching to draw and paint the subjects we find so fascinating, this is a great place to start. You know how it is in studying natural history, the more you know, the more you have to learn. Painting natural history subjects is a great way to learn about them. You don't really know a subject until you are forced to look close at the intricate details and try to depict your subject by drawing, painting, and modeling a sculpture that represents it in realistic art.
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