Illustration Books

I read about Redoute while researching the history of Chateau Malmaison. Malmaison is a small property in Moulis, which is in the Medoc region of Bordeaux in France. Yes, Chateau Malmaison makes wine... their 2000 vintage is fabulous, and worth looking for.

But anyway, Josephine de Beauharnais purchased Malmaison in 1799 for her and Napolean, and in 1800-1802, Malmaison (together with the Tuileries) was the seat of government.

Josephine planted and expanded the rose gardens of the Chateau, and was very interested in natural science. She commissioned Redoute to paint the rose garden of Malmaison (and their lilies, too).

If Redoute's work is interesting to you, you may want to research a little bit about Empress Josephine and Chateau Malmaison. At the very least, consider buying a bottle of 2000 Chateau Malmaison wine... and browse this book in a few years over a glass or two. That would be the next best thing to visiting the rose garden in person.

Absolutely outstanding illustrations, clear details, excellent prints. A pleasure to browse.

I HAVE SEEN AND BOUGHT THIS BOOK. IF A PERSON LOVES GORGEOUS, BEAUTIFUL, FLORAL ART PARTICULARLY ROSES TO HAVE THIS BOOK IS A MUST. BROWSING AND REVIEWING IT IS SIMPLY A MOST ENJOYABLE PASSTIME. IT'S REALLY A BOOK OF BEAUTY, A JOY FOREVER.

This is the second book on visual illusions by J Richard Block, the author, after his earlier book entitled 'Can You Believe Your Eyes'. Both are printed in large format. In fact, there is also a card deck which amplifies the earlier book.

Both books discussed the phenomena of human perception through hundreds of perplexing visual illusions & mind-bending eye tricks gathered from around the world.

The entire collection in the two books is definitely amazing and unique in some way.

The best learning experiences I got out of these two wonderful books are a greater understanding - & appreciation - of how the brain really works. I often use many of the visual illusions to demonstrate the principal operating principles of the brain, particularly the salient aspects of selective recognition and patterning. I have also found that some of them have been very useful in demonstrating cognitive traps & pattern interrupts, especially in the context of personal creativity.

Although the visual illusions are fun to play with, I find them very educational, just as what I have elaborated.

There is another type of visual illusions, known as random dot stereograms (some people call them 3D visual illusions), which are more fun but somewhat harder to play with. Nevertheless, they are also very educational, especially in understanding - & appreciating - how the brain really works!

I ordered this book for my husband and he truly loves it!! The book arrived in great condition (packaging was perfect!) I enjoy ordering from Amazon for this reason (plus the price is great, too!!) Thanks.

Over 200 illusions and examples of mind-bending tricks are included in Seeing Double, an enthusiastically recommended guide which tricks the eye into seeing two different images of each selection - and never at the same time. These are hand-drawn renderings both antique and contemporary taken from around the world, providing both well-known and unusual images from double illusions and ambiguous images to puzzles. A treasure trove of mind-challenging sights.

This book is plenty of fun. It begins with images that can be seen in two ways depending on what you regard as the background. Next are multiple figures that share contours, where the background is not the key to the ambiguity. Then we have a short chapter where you see different figures depending on whether you look at the left-hand or right-hand part of the image. After that come some rather famous images that are composed of several smaller images.

The chapter I liked the best was about images that change into related images when you turn the book upside down. This includes four of the famous Gustav Verbeek "Muffaroo and Lovekins" cartoon strips (written in 1903 and 1904). And the book concludes with a variety of other illusions.

I was surprised that it is so easy to produce interesting illusions. But I don't want to take anything away from the artists: what they created shows terrific imagination and talent.

Please keep in mind that Shakespeare's A midsummer night's dream (Monarch notes) (Monarch notes) by Eve Leoff is just as it says, Monarch Notes. A simple way to know the subject matter in a very condensed and abridged version great for those who do not have the time to read the book in its entirety. No illustrations are in it!

The story along with the images! Grate. Most of the books of its king feature only the plates with a brief description and the reader has to know the story to really understand and feel the image. Colour reproduction is not the best possible though. I have seen on the web the same images looking brighter and better. All in all it is a good book to have.

After I sadly lost an auction for a first edition of Midsummer Night's Dream with 1906 drawings by Arthur Rackham, I found and ordered this version -- a faithful copy. I'm delighted -- and not out so much money! :-)

I'm an avid collector of all books to do with fairies. This will take its place as a favorite among all my books. The play is magical, and the mix of genius -- Shakespeare's words and Rackham's imagery -- transported me to another world. There's nothing like it!!! As a fairy photographer/artist http://www.faeriechronicles.com/chronicles/antonia/index.htm I'm passionate about this genre and have have seen many of Rackham's illustrations before. It is really great to see them here with the story. There are the color copies from the plates, but also a plethora of elegant and whimsical pen and ink fairy drawings that introduce the chapters and decorate the pages that I'd never seen. Oh for joy. The pages appear to be copied from the original book (as if duplicated by scanning the original 1908 pages, but cleaned up to look new and enlarged), and they did a great job. The quality of the color reproductions is very good, especially for a paperback in this price range. I would love to have this in a hardback -- the publishers would do well to create an even fancier edition of this hearthrob -- the same size but with a more vintage-look and feel. The soft paperback tends to splay in my hands in its large format. This is a keeper and one that I'd like to last for years. Go check out the reviews on other publications of this play by itself without the illustrations -- you will find an audience that has been spellbound.

I also found a university site with the original book binding and almost all the images in the book scanned -- these are fabulous references:
http://www.special-coll.bham.ac.uk/Blueprint/feature_dream.htm

This is one of those books for which I'd enjoy having the first edition. The original had around 40 bookplates. My websearch found only a subsequent edition (with 16 plates) for $200! Nery a copy of the original 1908 version was to be found. I wonder what THAT would go for!? Please let me know if you find one for a reasonable amount, which I doubt would happen. -- Antonia

Lou Brooks is one of America's foremost designer-illustrators and his work has appeared in nearly every publication in America at one time or another. SKATE CRAZY doesn't contain many of Lou's masterful illustrations, but it does have his wacky, inventive mark on every page. Illustrators and designers across the globe are going to be drooling over Lou's delectable choices. Beautiful old advertisements, postcards, signs and stickers abound in this book--lovingly restored in many cases by Lou's wife, Clare (also a first-class artist).

But it's not only Lou's colleagues who are lucky to have Lou's jam-packed gem available. His fun, informative writing will delight anyone on your gift list. Buy a copy for creaky old grannie--she probably spent time in her youth on roller skates, mesmerized by the drone of the Hammond organ. Get a copy for the couch potato of your choice--it's time to bring back those halcyon days and hit the rinks again. Roll off those extra rolls! Send a copy to your kid at college--a great way to discover a nearly-forgotten, but once very important American pastime.

This is one hell of a buy, as well. It is crammed to the gills with photos and graphics and will inform and delight everyone who is lucky enough to get a copy.

If I could, I'd give this one 10 stars! Congratulations, Louie!

Although this book makes a perfect gift for someone who loves to skate, it's just as good for art students, pop culture buffs, and lovers of quirky, crazy stuff. The infinite variety of roller-skate images is dazzling. "Skate Crazy" belongs on the shelf of every graphic designer. Plus, it's a lot of fun! Some of the old roller-rink photos made me laugh out loud, and the wild assortment of vintage stickers are a joy to look at. I've only been roller skating twice, but I loved this book!

This book is a great compilation of skating memorabilia from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. The book is full of photos, ad illustrations, and postcards, but the best part is the stickers from individual rinks - there are over 400 of them! The restored graphics are amazing, and the vintage style will make anyone nostalgic for this era of skating. Anyone interested in art or graphics should take a look at the way Brooks updates the stickers, because he truly has done a fantastic job.

A tip of the hat to Lou Brooks for making this book such a delight to look at! The subject matter is pretty mundane and in the hands of many other book designers 'Skate Crazy' would just look bland but Mr Brooks knows his stuff. He knows how to select the right photos, handle color panels, overlap graphic images, choose a relevant typeface for headings and all the other little design elements that make each page sparkle and this book has 144 of them in a neat square format.

Although much of the material is similar Brooks has managed to split it into sixteen chapters and write a bit about each subject but the book is essentially visual. The four hundred rink stickers are the main pictorial items and nicely the index in the back is a geographical listing of past rinks across America. Strangely, despite a thorough coverage there are no close-up photos of skates, a page or two from a manufacturer's sales brochure would have been helpful I think.

'Skate Crazy' is a wonderful bit of nostalgia and if you rolled (or danced) around one of the three thousand rinks across the Nation in the Forties or Fifties you'll really enjoy looking at this book. Just super!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

SPACE ART: HOW TO DRAW AND PAINT PLANETS, MOONS, AND LANDSCAPES OF ALIEN WORLDS comes from a leading astronomical artist who explains the basics of styles and paints needed to produce the hues and excitement of alien worlds. Carroll has been a professional space art painter for over 25 years: his experience lends to a blend of science and art ideas which not only provides an overview of techniques, but provides some fourteen paintings, building in complexity, for step-by-step teaching. Any general-interest or art library will find it easily accessible and a popular pick.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I bought this book to gain an idea of how to paint western backdrops for a model railroad. The book is thouroughly illustrated with progressive views of how to create different images. Work of multiple artists are presented, so it goes beyond just one style. Explanations are given over the use of color. I have found it to be a very useful guide, and did I mention, it has lots of pictures!

Michael Carroll has written, once again,a very fine book. This one meets a specific need in the artistic painting market of today. Space Art is a unique topic that is a favorite of the author's and it shows. The narrative is presented clearly with step-by-step, easy-to-follow directions, including which colors to use, how to create textures, and specific tricks of the trade used to make the artist's space paintings as realistic as possible. The book portrays painting lessons, with colorful thumbnail views, for all levels of students, from beginners to intermediate through to advanced. Michael has also included educational highlights to broaden the painter's knowledge of his/her favorite space subject as they seek to broaden their painting experience to include the wonderful world of Space. It's a great book and very helpful.

I learned to paint from the wonderful Walter Foster art book series, which featured titles such as "How to Paint Landscapes," "How to Draw and Paint Seascapes," etc. Every niche of hobbyist painting was covered, from sunsets to still lifes. Typically, each subject would be explored through a series of illustrations showing the development of a painting from simple charcoal sketch, to rough color, to the finished work. Popular masters of the 50's and 60's such as Robert Wood and Violet Parkhurst let us look over their shoulders, sharing their "secrets" with struggling beginners. How I wish Michael Carroll's Space Art had existed back then!

Space Art is not a primer on painting, although a beginner can pick up valuable techniques unlikely to be covered in more traditional "how to" books. While there is a good, brief discussion of media and tools, and an excellent presentation on color, the book assumes a basic knowledge of how to mix and work acrylics. What the beginning painter might find particularly useful, however, is Carroll's discussion, throughout the book, on how to "see" -- how to observe and depict the interplay of light and objects and atmosphere.

Any basic art book will contain a diagram showing how to render and shade the cube, cone, and sphere, but Space Art links this exercise to nature in a way that traditional art books generally do not. For example, most landscape artists rarely paint the moon correctly, either depicting it as a featureless white disk or a weird, banana-shaped crescent. This is, I think, because they haven't made the conceptual leap that allows them to see the moon as a sphere, subject to the same rules of lighting as is an orange in a fruit bowl. They don't see the illuminated part of the moon as its "day" side, and the dark part as its "night." They haven't realized that the dividing line between day and night -- the terminator, to use astronomical parlance -- is an arc of an ellipse: the shape of a great circle seen in perspective. After reading Space Art and attempting its exercises, beginning painters will have a deeper understanding of light and shadow that will make them better artists in any genre of painting.

Space Art takes the reader through fourteen exercises, ranging from the the almost mundane -- "Earth seen from the Moon" -- to the science-fictional landscapes of extrasolar worlds with binary suns. Brief essays by established space artists punctuate the exercises. These essays touch only lightly on technique, but delve more deeply into how space artists interpret the raw data of science and apply this knowledge to imaginatively portray a subject in a way that transcends a mere photograph. The sample illustrations by these guest artists range stylistically from plein air sketches to digital photographic realism. Carroll wisely restricts his exercises to techniques available to the beginner. Although he may sometimes use the airbrush or computer in his commercial work, subtle gradients in the exercises are created using fan brushes and sponges.

Space Art is not only a useful book, but a beautiful one, well printed and rich with color. A reader is likely to learn a bit of astronomy and geology along the way, and Carroll's impish sense of humor comes through in the text, maintaining the friendly tone of a teacher who loves his work. Again, I wish some time traveler had brought this book to me forty years ago. Highly recommended for beginning -- and developing -- artists, in any genre.

The only one I missed (because of moving to the Netherlands). Happy to see a reprint finally of this book. The series is complete now (until next issue arrives of course). Every annual has been worth it and this one's no exception, even after 12 years!

This book with it's supurb collection of fantastic art comes to us reprinted from the 1995 edition of the same name. Here are 200 plus color illustrations from that era and cover the range from magazine covers, book dust jackets, or in many cases the book itself. Here are art works to illustrate stories or advertisements.

Spectrum 2 has been long out of print, after all, Spectrum 13 should be in your book store soon, and Spectrum 14's entry forms are now available. Each issue of the annual tends to go out of print fairly quickly, and I suspect this reprint will also. If interested, I suggest ordering your copy fairly quickly.

The mission of the organization is 'To promote the fantastic arts and provide an annual showcase for contemporary artists.' They have done a supurb job, not only with the annuals, but with museum exhibits and exhibits at shows around the country.

I have collected all but 1 of this great series and would have to say that this was probably my least favourite. My main issue is the lay out, with the size of a lot of the pictures being too small with lots of white space around them. I suppose it was only the second one in the series and they rectified this in later versions.

That said, it still have some great art in it and I would recommend it to anyone interested in sci-fi art

Over 134 pages of full color glossy fantasy and sci fi artwork. The same high quality selection as the other spectrum series books. Has a digital work of "death" (Neil Gaiman's story character) and many popular book cover artists throughout.

Ms. Ching truly pays homage to author Cao Xuequin's Dream of the Red Chamber. Her photographs carry us on a personal sojourn exploring the central love story and the unfolding allegory behind it. Beautiful and evocatively enticing. A lovely coffee table book to share with my friends.

I really enjoyed this book! Wonderful and stunning to look at. I read "Dream of the Red Chamber" many years ago and thought this book was an interesting visual interpretaion.

Loved it!

Makes an impressive gift! The photographs were taken in China and give life and excitement to an old tale, Story of the Stone.
I would highly recommend giving this beautiful book to family, friends and clients.

"In the hands of Linda Ching the camera is a delicate paintbrush. The images she has created to tell the tale of "Story of the Stone" summons the senses--like delicate water paintings, opalescent colors emerge. In silky browns and beiges she arouses ecstatic figures; a wistful woman is caught in a gossamer mirror; a twig soars alone, overlaid in sunlit leaves. A fresh new look at an old Chinese masterpiece." -- Moana Tregaskis

For music fans, this is a magnificent treat. Storm Thorgerson's Hipgnosis was responsible for some of the most quirky, eye-catching album cover art of the past 30+ years and this book gives an insight into the thinking that went behind some of these classic covers. (Pink Floyd fans however, might also want to read "Mind over Matter'' for fuller details of the covers done by Hipgnosis - they did all except The Wall). Better yet, Thorgerson dry wit and oh-so-English sense of humor permeates his writing, which means the text as well as the pics will entertain the reader - a real bonus. Highly recommended.

"Taken By..." meaning this book focuses on the amazing surreal imagery of Storm Thorgerson, rather than the finished product (i.e., album cover) itself. So, the book is geared more toward photography than a graphic design point of view. Recommended for all album art book collectors (a dying breed itself!).

Storm Thorgerson is the artist that designed many classic and current rock album covers.
This book is a facinating review of many of the album covers and how they were made.
I recommend this book for any fan of Rock or commercial art.

Taken By Storm is a great collection of works by my favorite artist/designer Storm Thorgerson. He gives insights into where ideas came from, how elements of pictures came to be, and which ones held special meanings. Storm also includes many that were made, but NOT used by the bands in question (and therefore previously unseen by the public). Storm went to great lengths to get just the right set-up in just the right place, with just the right lighting...a testimony to his dedication to this form of art. Fans of Pink Floyd, The Cranberries, Catherine Wheel, Mars Volta, Led Zepplin, and others will be zapped into Storm's world, captivated, and sometimes shocked by what they find there as they are taken by Storm...

This is my daughter's favorite artist and I get her one of these calendars each year.

First of all, the calendar got to me pretty quickly. It was gorgeous. I'm absolutely in love with it.

I've been a fan of Victoria Frances since the first time I saw any of her pictures, so my opinion may be a little biased. As always, Victoria's artwork is amazing and beautiful. This calendar would not be good for those who dislike blood as she tends to draw vampires a lot. For anyone else, I would recommend this without a second thought.

Absolutely perfect for all of us who long for some anaemic, safe gothdom.

This calendar actually reminds me a lot of the posters displayed in hairdressers windows advertising l'Oreal's majirel hair colour range. (I always make that comparison.)

A word of warning to potential gift-givers though. This calendar is put out by a fantasy t&a publishing house. So make sure you undo the cellophane so that the ads for some very racy mags fall out.

Don't know what happened to March though.(!!!)

Roger Dean is best known for his groundbreaking work in LP cover art, including Yes, Uriah Heep, Osibisa, and other names from the 1970s music world. This great collection pulls together Dean's early work, including sketches, student work from his time at the Royal College of Art, and set design for the Yes tour stages.

I usually think of Dean as a visual artist, so his furniture, sets, and architectural interests were a pleasant surprise. It would have been helpful to have better identification of year in which each piece done. That's a small enough complaint, though. This is an outstanding collection of his work, and an interesting reference point for comparing the 70s culture to todya's.

//wiredweird

The architypal album cover artist of the early seventies period, Roger Dean produced covers for seventies album artists such as Yes, Gentle Giant, Greenslade and even Osibisa. This, his first of a number of publications, contains his early and best work. For fans of the progressive rock group "Yes" it also contains a number of photographs from their ambitious "Tales from Topographic Oceans " tour. This book should be reprinted NOW and is a must for all ardent "Yes " fans.

Roger Dean's artwork has been featured on the record and CD coversof Yes, Aisa, and Pink Floyd. He has displayed his artistic talent since Yes' "Fragile" LP in 1972. His work belongs in a museum display (I did see a print of the Fragile cover in the Hayden Planetarium) and this book (if you're lucky enough to get your hands on it) is recommended to avid Yes fans! It features the covers of "Topographic Oceans", "Beginnings", "Relayer", "Yessongs", and the inner gatefold of "Close to the Edge". Simply breathtaking! And in need of a reprint soon!

Groundbreaking when it was first published, this unique book has remained a benchmark in both art and publishing. Dean founded his own Paper Tiger imprint to release this collection of his designs. The book is sized the same as an old vinyl album, and contains dozens of his architectural/fantasy world renderings, know best as the covers of the majority of the YES albums, along with many other rock projects. Essential for the fans of Dean, it covers his schooling, 2D and 3D design projects, and an amazing array of full color, high quality reproductions of his ink and watercolor paintings.