Illustration Books

Now, if only I could find the other two in the series! This book has me hooked on Fynn's tales of little Anna and the gang. One gets a sense of the location because you read the words just as they were said; you can almost imagine a little girl's voice speaking sometimes...

Like the fist one this was a delight to read. Some more insight into Anna's world and the way she experiance God. I loved it!

Antonio's People is a wonderful book that share about his life and subjects. It shows the inspiration of the colors, movement, and style that Lopez is accredited for. It is a book for someone who wants to learn about Lopez's art during the 1980's and the famous people that he drew.

Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos were two men with fabulous style. In this book, you get a sense of how they saw the world and how they tried to make it a prettier place. Paul Caranicas has created an homage to these two men and their work. It should be required reading for anyone interested in Fashion, Art, Illustration, Culture, and most of all STYLE.

I recently read the 1993 Doctoral Dissertation by the author, Steven Luckert, which is entitled: Jesuits, Freemasons, Illuminati and Jacobins. This excellent dissertation describes in detail the genesis of all the beyond-the-pale conspiracy theories which unfortunately are propounded still today by hacks and nuts, as they were at their start in the eighteenth century. Luckert is now chief curator at the Holocaust Museum.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and viewing Szyk's wonderous art. The biography is well written and interesting. The artwork is intriguing and thought-provoking. I highly recommend this book to afficionados of Jewish Art and Literature.

This little, inexpensive book is a paperback republication of the 1927 "The art of pen drawing". It is, then, a bit quaint, but in a good sense. It is the kind of art guide that nobody writes any longer: very well written, witty, entertaining, a bit "aristocratic". Not just one of the many, dry, step by step art books that are way too common nowadays. On the other hand, this also means that as a guide this book is not really too useful, especially for beginners.

The MANY illustrations are awesome and worth more that the book's price by themselves. It will be a very welcome companion on my bookshelves to the "bigger" and even more impressive Guptill's "Rendering in pen and ink", which you really want to own if you like ink. It's a pity that there are so little art books out there with good collections of ink art, which I truly love.

I am really happy I purchased this little precious paperback. Highly recommended if you love ink.

Before I bought this book I had absolutely no experience in ink drawing, but had always wanted to try it out. Upon receiving this book I began reading it and checking aout all the different drawings in the book. I have been practicing a lot and I found this book very helpful in explaining different techniques that help to make your drawings more realistic. i would definitley recomend this book to anyone wanting to learn to draw with ink as alternative to pencil drawing. I personally find ink drawing much more enjoyable.

I love this book! It has tips for layout, as well as step by step instructions for building an illustrated letter. I also like how it shows several different styles of illumination.

Although [the price] seems hefty for a paperback book, you won't think that after seeing it. It is filled with color photos and helpful diagrams of the incredibly beautiful, complete with step-by-step directions to almost ensure success. Best of all, it is helpful for many other arts as well, since the information about coloring, centering, decorating letters, composing a monogram, etc. can be applied just as well to numerous other arts. I really love this book; it is unbelievably gorgeous and inspiring, with such great directions that even I should be able to do this successfully. Even if you're not a calligrapher, this will greatly help you should you decide to give it a try -- and will also help even if you use computer fonts, just want to frame and display treasured quotes or invitations, etc. I have nothing to do with the author, publisher, or anyone involved with this book ... I just took a chance and ordered it, and am thrilled beyond words with it. HIGHEST possible recommendation.

I used to think of John Berkey as just a sci-fi artist. But after viewing this book its clear Berkey is quite simply an excellent artist on all levels. What I find masterful about his work is that upon close viewing you see that he uses simple brush strokes for his approach. Yet, when viewed from a distance his art appears as detailed as any photograph I've seen. This is what it means to be a true artist: Being able to convey a clearly conceived and well-executed idea while maintaining an original sense of style and technique. Mr Berkey's work should be viewed by all, whether sci-fi fan or not.

For those of you who were inspired by John Berkey's fantastic visions of the future decades ago, you will find continued inspiration in Jane Frank's new book, The Art of John Berkey. This book complements the earlier Painted Space book well, but stands on its own as a serious work about John Berkey. Several pages of autobiographical notes from Mr. Berkey himself followed by several chapters chronicling the many phases of Berkey's remarkable career. Back before computers, Berkey mastered the brush, inferring technological complexity with only minimal strokes in a way few other artists can. He ranks high along with legendary futurist artists like Syd Mead and Ralph McQuarrie. The book is beautifully printed, with lush colorful pages that bring Berkey's paintings to life. I recommend you purchase this book-it will take you on a fantastical journey you will want to come back to time and again.

The author, Michael Leek is a professional illustrator and has the artist's eye for picking out great maritime paintings. Starting with the Dutch School of 18th Century, Leek progresses chapter by chapter through the different national schools of maritime art. Along with great paintings, Leek provides a short biography of the artists.

This is not an academic book. It is written for the person who loves paintings of old ships. This is a book rich in atmosphere. I would recommend this book for anybody who likes spend lazy afternoons thumbing through beautiful books.

I've spent many a long and happy hour aboard literary ships, from Viking longboats to modern warships, and perhaps my fondest times were spent with Horatio Hornblower or Jack Aubrey in the days of fighting sail.

Here is a prize to be snapped up, a feast to be savoured, an illustration on every page, working through from the earliest ship paintings of royal barges carring Pharoahs up the Nile to Charles Turner's painting of Britain's last battleship being towed to the breakers.

In between there are hundreds of pictures, every one carefully selected and described. The illustrations are evocative - I'm looking at an early passenger liner now and I can all but smell the coal smoke, feel the spray on my face from the waves and hear the comments of the passengers lining the rails as they cruise past.

The text is focussed on the painters - there are many, many long columns devoted to the artists, their lives, their styles, their main works. We learn of the various schools and techniques and developments in the field of nautical illustration. But the artists are the focus, as they should be, and this is a very human book - I felt at times that I was standing behind an artist, looking over his shoulder as he captured the essence of some mighty ship. Or of some cameo, passengers on a liner, fishermen cleaning their nets, small boats serving a fleet anchored in the background.

Eminently readable, it provides the authorative background for the real reason I bought this book - the illustrations. This is a book I can lose myself in, sailing away on waves that have long since spent themselves, on ships that are but memories now, with painters, dust themselves but living fresh and new in these pages.

The illustrated biography of one of England's major 19th-century illustrators has about 180 of Tenniel's illustrations along with 30-40 other related ones. This outstanding, comprehensive, definitive work covers both Tenniel's biography and his artistic career. The career focuses on the two major factors of Tenniel's classic illustrations for various editions of "Alice in Wonderland" and his political and social cartoons appearing in "Punch" magazine for decades. The illustrator's style, caricature, and perspective are discussed in relation to political and social events and issues of the time, including Tenniel being caught up in the social controversy and legal proceedings surrounding "Punch" articles allegedly denigrating the Irish and Tenniel's related illustrations often picturing Irish men with simian-like or other animal-like features. But for the most part, Tenniel was a popular and successful artist because he portrayed with unmatched, unfailing skill and ingenuity England's image of itself as the world's leading colonial and commercial power with an enviable domestic political system. This included critical cartoons of some of England's policies and practices and leading politicians which were a part of the modern-day English political and media tradition. Tenniel's position among the handful of England's top illustrators is secure, and does not have to be supported by argument or claims. The art historian and Tenniel authority Morris mainly fills in the ground for Tenniel's acknowledged pedestal. For collectors, besides the numerous illustrations in the text tracing Tenniel's career and exemplifying his imagination and versatility, there is an appendix "A Guide to Tenniel's Unidentified Punch Work."

One cannot think of classic children's literature without including Lewis Carroll's Alice books, and one cannot think of Alice without the splendid illustrations of Sir John Tenniel. Indeed, the images of the little girl confronting monsters, mad characters, and suspensions of logic are familiar even to those who have not read the books (or had the books read to them). Tenniel's Alice illustrations are his masterwork, but there was much more to him, revealed in _Artist of Wonderland: The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel_ (University of Virginia Press) by art historian Frankie Morris. For over a half a century Tenniel was a staffer at the magazine _Punch_, producing miscellaneous drawings, fanciful initial letters, headings, and more, eventually graduating to the big weekly cartoon which was a staple of the magazine. At his passing in 1914, it was recognized that he would be best remembered by his Alice illustrations, but he would not have been pleased that what he thought of as a secondary career of book illustration should have eclipsed his political cartoons. In her book, Morris corrects the balance, giving Tenniel's biography, then spending six chapters on aspects of the Alice illustrations and five more on the _Punch_ cartoons. Her book is big and handsome, and has plenty of example illustrations.

Tenniel was invited to _Punch_ by its first editor in 1850. At that time, the magazine had been in existence only nine years, but had already become a mainstay in presenting the conservative, middle to upper class views of Victorian England. It was not long before Tenniel moved up from doing small pictures to doing a title page, and eventually to the full page weekly cartoon that was to make him famous. At a Wednesday staff dinner, the subject and treatment of the cartoon would be discussed, and Tenniel would take the ideas and make them his; Morris shows how he simplified and intensified one image after another. It was often turned into a banner for different causes, handed around for group comment, pasted onto kiosks, or copied in other papers internationally. Lewis Carroll asked for Tenniel to do the illustrations for the first Alice book in 1863. Carroll was a fan of _Punch_ and the drawings therein. It was a nearly perfect partnership of author and illustrator. They were of the same class, both frank and honest, both lovers of the theater, Shakespeare, toys, and pantomimes, and especially they delighted in children. Morris's interpretation of the pictures will be of interest to anyone who loves the Alice books. For instance, there is much about how important pantomimes were to both Carroll and Tenniel. Carroll loved the holiday entertainments, as part of his affection for his child friends, and Tenniel called upon stage representations of pantomime characters to interact with Alice. There were, for instance, chess games in some pantomimes with human pieces; many of the chessmen Tenniel depicts are not chessmen at all, but are people dressed up in chessmen costumes. The same could be said of his Humpty Dumpty, or the leg of mutton to whom Alice is introduced.

Morris shows that Tenniel's political cartoons are important guides to British thought and sentiment of their times, and they have been frequently reproduced to illustrate history books. There are many that she shows here, and each has an explanation to put it into historical context; we require that, because they are from a strange and distant land and time. It is not so with the Alice illustrations, which come from a strange and distant fantasy source, but whose realistic representation of a bizarre world is beyond explanation. In this they are timeless classics. Any Alice fan will enjoy this good-looking volume, which is sure to become a main reference to Tenniel's life and art.

This is a must have for anyone who likes either franchise or just loves to see the behind the scene special effects stuff.

From the moment I saw the first Alien and Predator movies I was hooked on the franchise. AvP heightened my elation even further and then I got this book. The detail of each creature, the techniques of the artists and engineers, and the overall format are beautifully done! A totally inspiring glimpse into the world of making monsters.

For my purposes, the book is phenomenal. I often need to know the accompanying Bomb Groups and Squadrons for a given B-24 so that I may paint the nose art on A-2 jackets. As the description states, it does list the Nose Art names with the associated Bomb Groups and Squadrons if available. It does also list the serial numbers for the B-24s and if there is a known picture in existence. I also like that Forman listed the B-24s alphabetically, but also went a step further and listed them by Bombardment group as well which makes it very easy to reference the bombers.

THERE ARE VERY FEW PICTURES IN THIS BOOK, IT IS BASICALLY A LONG LIST OF NAMES AND SERIAL NUMBERS. IF PICTURES IS WHAT YOU WANT, GET "VINTAGE AIRCRAFT NOSE ART" by Gary M Valant AS THAT HAS NEARLY 1000 PICTURES OF DIFFERENT NOSE ART SAMPLES. Incredible amount of information packed into this book. if you're a true WWII buff, get this when you can as it seems to go in and out of print and sometimes is hard to get.

A must for B-24 Buffs! Wally has expanded his format to include data on AF Wings and their component bomb groups for most of the USAAF. His B17 Nose Art Directory was concerned with the 8th, 15th, and 20th AFs. And rather than searching the total list for group aircraft he has listed the a/c assigned to each group by group number. Definitely a source book for important data (names, serial numbers, photo availability) on this aircraft.