Illustration Books

The nine sections of CREATIVE LOW-BUDGET PUBLICATION DESIGN show high-impact graphics cutting costs with clip art and on-hand photos, imaginative grids and typefaces, and one- or two-color ink printing. What it comes down to on any budget is readability, with easy-to-relate-to centers of attention, designs, and moods. On a shoestring, it also helps to proofread early against corrective reprints and to minimize design and paper expenses, the latter of which can be 50 percent of all costs.

I especially like Mary Pretzer's information on color. Black elegantly organizes while a second color accents. Also, two colors together can create the illusion of a third color, known as the adjacency factor.

Excellent evidence backs each budget measure, and the do-it-yourself section example of a coffee stain scanned for background art proves great ideas can be inexpensive. With a good index and well-explained terms, the book gets along with Val Adkins' CREATIVE BROCHURES & BOOKLETS, Poppy Evans' THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO ECO-FRIENDLY DESIGN, Steven Heller's NEWSLETTERS NOW, and Rita and Roberta Street's CREATIVE NEWSLETTERS & ANNUAL REPORTS. Anyone interested in desktop publishing, graphic arts, marketing or just painlessly learning something new should walk away a happy camper.

This book is a great marketing resource. The thinking behind the examples is what is really inspiring. The book goes beyond being a useful guide and idea resource. It demonstrates how to get results and think creatively whatever your budget.

I've worked in both for-profit and non-profit organizations and Mary Pretzer's book has been a great help for projects in both situations.

Creative Low-Budget Publication Design goes on my list of marketing classics.

I really can't recommend this book enough. The tutorials are easy to understand even when dealing with advanced techniques. It could be a bit much if you are brand new to Photoshop but I doubt it. I don't think anyone looking into purchasing a book of this types would be at all disappointed. There are other tutorial books out there but this one has subjects and artwork that are truly engrossing. Not only are the tutorial format and content superb but the author offers an online community that can be accessed through his personal site. Here you can ask for help on problem areas from other readers and often the author himself and also post your own work that the lessons have hopefully helped you to create. An easy 5 stars, great work.

I purchased this book on a whim and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of its content. Lea takes readers step by step through simple and very complex design techniques. His instructions are easy to follow and, unlike many other Photoshop books I have picked up, just as easy to apply to other projects!

Having access to the author through the reader forum on the book website makes this an even more useful tool. Any tips that might seem vague are easily explained by the man who wrote the book - and other readers that have overcome similar problems. I have worked through several books on Photoshop, but this has been the best by far!

Very well done...this book brought back many fond memories of a very underated artist.

I've been a fan of Curt Swans art for over 30 years and I never knew much about the man until I read this book. It features many interviews with people involved in the comics industry who knew and/or worked with Curt over the years. Some of the people who share their recollections are Alan Moore, the late Julius Schwartz, Roger Stern, and members of Curts family. There are also many illustrations throughout the book, including an excellent colour section with two page spreads that highlight his work on the Superboy, Superman, Legion Of Super-Heroes and Worlds Finest titles.

Many artists have worked on Superman in his various comics incarnations over the years, but Curt Swan will always be my favourite Superman artist. I'm extremely grateful to everyone involved with the production and publication of this excellent book. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I am so glad that the Lord led me to this book at this time in my life. This book is a must for a person who loves the Lord and His work. The book shows ways that Moody prepared sermons after he had been inspired on things to say. The book inspired me to see how the Lord's work can be spread even though we don't travel a great distance and are not eloquent speakers. The Lord uses us anyway.

This reading is essential. John 14

I am so glad that the Lord led me to this book at this time in my life. This book is a must for a person who loves the Lord and His work. The book shows ways that Moody prepared sermons after he had been inspired on things to say. The book inspired me to see how the Lord's work can be spread even though we don't travel a great distance and are not eloquent speakers. The Lord uses us anyway.

This reading is essential. John 14

This collection of cartoons is hilarious. Each page is a visual/wordplay on the titles of famous books. The title piece is a caption that looks like a painting and is a fish dressed in Mona Lisa like clothing with the caption, "The Da Vinci Cod." Another is a hound dog in female clothing including a bonnet, with the caption "Tess of the Baskervilles." However, without question my favorite that had me laughing out loud is one featuring an adolescent boy zipping up while walking away from a urinal. There is a tear running from his eye, his lips are pursed in pain and the caption is "The Catcher in the Fly." Humor just doesn't get any better than that.

Known for his political cartoons and book illustrations, artist Chris Riddell has assembled an entertaining collection of illustrations sure to please literature/English teachers everywhere. In THE DA VINCI COD: AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS FOR UNWRITTEN BOOKS, Riddell shares drawings that spoof famous book titles.

Besides "The Da Vinci Cod," there are drawings for "The Apes of Wrath," "The Water Adolescents," and "Oliver Bust." Sixty-six titles are spoofed, with the original publication dates ranging from 1776 to 2003, with the "apologies" to the authors at the back (in other words, Riddell provides a key in case a reader can't figure out the spoof).

This book is flat-out funny, and often irreverent. Literature teachers might get a kick out of assigning classes to figure out the title spoofs, as should the students (theoretically).

For anyone who likes to read or appreciates classic literature, this little book is a hoot. Take it home so you always have a few laughs available on an otherwise gloomy day.

Reviewed by Christina Wantz Fixemer
11/21/2006

Compulsively purchased MANY books on Illuminations, Calligraphy and Decorated letters. This is by far the most useful. Pleasantly surprised to find it had a CD included. While not using any of the illustrations exactly, the clear, black and white designs and the ability to "reverse" them and size them on the computer gave me a head start on an alphabet carving project I am undertaking. Will definintely use this publisher for research again.

Wow! Another great publication by Shambhala. 1,000 black and white images of fancy, decorated initials make up this fat little volume. Most of the initials are florid Victorian and Art Nouveau in style, but there are some nice black letter and gothic styles as well. Better still, the companion cd-rom contains all 1,000 initials in hi resolution format for both Windows and Macintosh platforms. The PC images are saved as tiffs, a format that is supported by just about every graphic and desktop publishing software out there.

Chris Foss' spectacular space art inspired me as a young man to become more involved with the world's of space and science fiction. This book is a colorful testament to an immense and original talent. Someone should surely get this man involved in a big budget movie! Chris, where are you? Time to start selling prints of these pictures on-line!

For the avid Chriss Foss collector, this is an abolute must! Fantastic images of Foss-style beasts, crafts, cities, realms and galaxial world-building accompanies a storyline that reveals the innermost thoughts and experiences of a star-hopping young woman student known simply as 'J' in compelling diary-style entries.

One hundred and forty three A4 pages incorporating 69 exquisite, high-detailed gloss images (26 being double-spread) and 60 sketches describe places, beings and scenes encountered in her travels across our future galaxy. An avidness to self portraisim only to be described as a pseudo-narcicism, and her lack of a camera forced this Jewel in Time to re-create her voyage and experiences in stunning detail as her "quest to return home - Earth" imbues her travels with situations and circumstances beyond self-discovery.

Being the book is presented as "a facsimile of parts of a diary discovered during the excavation of the New Venice site", Foss' imagination runs wild with his incredibly detailed and inevitable style that only he can deliver.

A brilliant work from a brilliant mind, it will satisfy and only help to insatiate your hunger for more creations from a man that has dominated the science-fiction art world spanning his remarkable career.

Top-notch!

This book is really great because it provides the reader with an extensive view of Dore's work. It displays more than a hundred high quality full-paged engravings for a very low price. I was utterly delighted when I found this book : I am French and though Gustave Dore is a French artist, it is at present impossible to find here such books as the Dore series published by Dover Publishers.

Gustav Dore illustrated books and magazines in the 19th century, and these are a collection of his woodcuts from several different publications. The recreations are fantastic, from the Bible to Poe to Dante, Dore traverses grand stories of faith, humor, and fantasy all without missing a beat. It's amazing that these are glorious reproductions of handmade, woodcut images. Dore rarely made the woodcuts himself, but sometimes drew them directly to the wood it was to be cut from. Dore is brilliant, and a forgotten Master of book illustration. Many illustrations elicit a sense of Tolkien's works; though long before Tolkien.
Any of these could be easily removed from the volume, (though that would be sacreledge), and put into a frame to make a beautiful piece of art to hang on your wall. If you do commit this sacreledge, I recommend "The Empyrean" from Dante's "Divine Comedy" as a favorite.

Sure, Homer's Odysseus may have known the ways of many cities and the minds of many men, to say nothing of various monsters and enchantresses, but he had nothing on the reader who follows Ariosto's assorted heroes and heroines through the rollicking, raucous, kaleidoscopic, chivalric-epic world of "Orlando Furioso." The prospective reader of that massive opus may turn for an overview or foretaste of its attractions to this comprehensive pictorial treatment by consummate illustrator Gustave Dore. True, Dore may sometimes be thought to slight the satirical, tongue-in-cheek, and light-hearted aspects of the poem in favor of its epic sweep and moody solemnity. But his is a worthy visual accompaniment to one of the most astonishingly rich and splendidly entertaining masterpieces in all of world literature, and to its imagination, romance, sensuality, and adventurousness he certainly does full justice.

This book contains a treasure of very atmospheric and detailed scenes. Doré's masterly use of superwide pespectives is an open invitation to explore his detailed and scetched people, landscapes, castles, heroes, battlefields and romantic situations. The illustration settings cover an area as huge as old europe with an ocassional touch of Asia. A particular delight are the morphed human-animal creatures. This book is great for just diving in and imagining yourself in these bizarre environments. enjoy !

a wide varienty of options. Art appears to be realistic. Very creative and easy to attract the eye.

a wide varienty of options. Art appears to be realistic. Very creative and easy to attract the eye.