Clip Art Books

I got a copy of this book/CD to have images for our wedding invitations and envelopes. I was more interested in leaves than trees and I think the book is stronger on trees, but there are many nice examples of both. The CD provides images in many formats and sizes (for print vs. web applications) and it worked out great. As usual Dover is pretty much the only company with anything like this and it's reasonably priced.

Love the colorful posters in this book - it's a fine addition to my library. I'm in love with big files so, while the CD offered with the book is great and the images are 300 dpi, they're a bit small. You can recover from that if you want larger versions, by scanning the images yourself.

"Visual Illusions in Motion with Moire Screens" is exactly that; a visual exploration of moire effects using simple geometric patterns. Not a scholarly tome about the mechanics of visual perception, but a thoughroughly enjoyable visual experience of the facinating world of moire effects. Sure to stimulate lots of creative uses in the minds of artists and designers, the wealth of patterns and use of different colors makes it a good study tool as well. This book is fun and is sure to appeal to to anyone old enough to turn a page!

This book delves into the fascinating technique of adding collage elements to watercolor paintings. Basically, this is adding bits of paper of various shapes, textures & colors to the surface to enhance the painting over them.

Experimentation to develop a personal style is stressed here. Basic principles of texture, layering, contrast and color are explored first. Then you see how these elements are incorporated into finished paintings.

The author is an accomplished master of this technique. Many examples of his work are shown in progress & completed. He emphasizes throughout how artists of any level in any medium can apply these concepts to their work.

Whether or not you decide to emulate Brommer's work, this book is a great springboard of ideas and ways of looking at the painting process. It is filled with solid and helpful ideas.

I expected this book to be a collection of "stories" about the development of everyday items. Instead I read about how and why inventors invent new things. Although this is somewhat interesting, the book has not been work the purchase.

Henry Petroski writes an indepth look at how everyday items evolve. He thesis, which he rarely tires of repeating, is that the form of an object follows its failure. He rejects the saying "form follows function" as being quaint and incomplete. He uses numerous examples of the evolution of the paperclip, fork, scotch tape and other common items to illustrate that objects change not due to far sighted design, but instead to users finding fault with how the object does its job and trying to improve it. The book can be a little dry and repetitive at times but offers fascinating insights into why a fork has four tines or why the paperclip looks the way it does.

Forks, pins, paperclips, zippers: why are they as they are? Henry Petroski thinks he knows, and his history of the inventions you use everyday arrives at a fairly radical conclusion. Necessity is not the mother of invention: annoyance is. And -- to topple another shibboleth of modern design theory -- form does not follow function. Need proof? Compare chopsticks and forks. Starting from tableware, Petroski launches into the world of tools, tools that make tools, and the way tools are fashioned by those who use them. The air of secrecy which surrounded many of the "trades" until quite recently (and to some degree continues yet, see below), has had the result that there are numerous specialized tools only decades old whose purpose we don't know. Many of us remember the rapid evolution of the pop-top, but the author has pulled together the whole story from its invention in 1959 by Ermal Fraze (it came to him in a dream) until the emergence of the non-removable version we know today, in 1980. All of which fits into the bigger picture of sealing and reopening containers, an historical duet, since canning begat the can opener. The author's discussion of secrecy in the manual arts reminds me of a friend and fellow mason who plied his trade in New England in the 1970s. When working for someone whose willingness to pay was in question, my friend would install a pane of glass between two of the flue tiles about halfway up a chimney. If the contractor didn't deliver payment in full, the chimney didn't work, and no one looking up or down the stack could figure out why. Once the bill was satisfied, the mason would go up on the roof and drop a brick down the chimney. (How this particular use of a "useful thing" evolved is not addressed in the book.) Most telling of all, perhaps, is Petroski's look at some of the unintended consequences of invention. For example, the plastic garbage bag was introduced as a solution to the sticky dirtiness which often accrued to unlined garbage containers. His discussion of the downside of this solution is enough to start you wrapping trash in paper once again, and long for the good old days. A fun read.

this book is so intriguing and offers such great insight into the world of design, patents, and the evolutionary history of some of the most "mundane" objects in our everyday lives! definitely worth a read! then pass it on to a friend!

This book draged on and on on the history of the fork. Poorly written and hard to follow.

this book has nice Indian inspired stencil designs. These are designs meant to use for making stencils, as the title indicates.

i thought i was getting stencils not stuff printed on paper! oh well its fine for that price and i think i can figure out how to use it with my henna stuff.

This book consists of small motifs and patterns. While the patterns are nice they are just black and white pictures. I wanted precut stencils which I could use to decorate. This book is for those who can use these patterns to perhaps make their own stencils. Not what I expected or wanted.

Actually this book is not a stencil book but it's very inspiring if you're intrested in Indian motifs.I used some of the designs in my authentic graphics.

This book has many beautiful stencil designs in it. It is definitely useful for any artist looking for India designs.

This book is good for the collection. Two stars solely because there are newer books in the series that are superior.

If you are at all interested in charter illustration or design you must include this book in your library. It is the only book that I have bought in the last few years which contains so many sources of inspiration. You will find your self thumbing through this title over and over again.

What I find interesting about this book, besides the high quality of design technique for characters, is the technologies people implement to create characters. It covers hand rendered, vector, raster and 3D formats for character design. Pure computer generated graphics, as well as applying real textures scanned in from nature. This book is a bit like an encyclopedia to world wide character design, applying a vast range of techniques and methods in creating them. Very useful.

Not knowing what to expect from this book, i was flat out blown away not only by the vast amount of images, but the level of talent that was chosen.

as a vector illustrator, i would highly suggest this to be on your shelf because something will inspire you to push your own work higher.

joshua
http://www.hydro74.com

I am a student exploring character design-designer toys. This book is not worth your time or money. I wanted to be awed every page, when only about 3 designers were actually interesting. Yes, it is printed very nicely, and bound nicely, yet I would highly recommend you take a peak at their web page before you purchase it. Not for me.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting but when I got the book and viewed the pictures I only found a little more than a dozen that were useful or interesting for my purpose. However, if you are an art student or just interested in the occult or demonology then this book will provide some unique and intriguing pictures.

This book is not meant to be an introduction to Wicca or a history of witchcraft and demonology. It's intended purpose is simply to provide an illustrated reference work primarily for historians, teachers, artists, craftsman, and authors working in the area of witchcraft and demonology.

That being said, the book is divided into twelve chapters, each dealing with various aspects of witchcraft, death, demons, and the occult and providing a plentiful cornucopia of illustrations, woodcuts, copperplates, and artwork representative of the subject at hand. The works of Durer, Dore, and others appear together with illustrations from such famous demonological works such as Colin De Plancy's "Dictionnarie Infernal" and Francesco Maria Guazzo's "Compendium Maleficarum" as well as countless others from ancient to modern times.

This is a first class illustrated reference book and will be useful to any number of those interested in the history of illustration of the Dark Arts.

This review has nothing to do with how the book treats Wicca or witchcraft. The only question I want to answer here is how good a collection of illustrations on this historical/mythological subject it is, and the answer is: not very good at all. The quality of the illustrations is terrible for the most part. While there are some decent reproductions, most look like someone put a sheet of onion-skin paper up to a wall in some medieval church and hastily traced the picture underneath, all the while looking over his shoulder to make sure the caretaker wasn't approaching. And if you are looking for some good explanatory text, don't hold your breath. Aside from captions below each illustration identifying artist and source, there are no more than two or three introductory sentences PER CHAPTER. Better quality reproductions and some good research and interpretive text could have made this a scholarly tome. As it stands, it seems more like an attempt to make money off a collection of old tracings that were lying around in someone's grandmother's attic.

Its great to see history about witchcraft and deamons and so on. Some of the pictures are somewhat disturbing and yet understandable where and how the ignorance of the 16th century began. Please remember, that this book barely has words; its just pictures and nothing else, so, buy it if your a history buff in witchcraft and the occult.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting but when I got the book and viewed the pictures I only found a little more than a dozen that were useful or interesting for my purpose. However, if you are an art student or just interested in the occult or demonology then this book will provide some unique and intriguing pictures.

Many kinds of lovely line drawing dragons. These are b/w line drawings, no colour, despite the cover. Still, very much worth the $$.

For goldwork embroidery which uses large but simple designs, these dragons would need to be greatly enlarged and simplified further. But a useful source anyway and good price.

I ordered this book and a book called Dragons and Wizards. When I started to look through Dragons:A Book of Designs, I was sorely disappointed. Everything in this book is in the Dragons and Wizards CD-ROM and Book except the Wizards one had additional media in it. I feel like I paid twice for the same book. BEWARE, THIS IS A LESSER DUPLICATE!

I will not lie, this book has some interesting drawings but from the point of view of a graphic designer most drawings are lacking in graphism. They all are in black and white (with exception of those portrayed on the cover) which I have no problem with; but if you are thinking of reproducing them for logos, decoration, emblems, etc. you will find some dragons unusable since most are awfully complicatedly misdrawn: eyes are often off, lines are shabby, drawings seem childlike and not up to standards with other Dover books of design I have bought. The origin of the drawings is vague and sometimes unexistent, most only state which country they came from and dates are general to entire centuries, no record from where it was taken from or whom drew them, with exception to seven drawings in the whole book. Still if you only want them for looking at it or if you're willing to repair broken lines and seemingly unfinished drawings you should buy it.

These dont have color but I bought them for the patterns..to use parts of this one and parts of that one on tracing paper to come up with my own dragons..the pictures are very good quality..and for any dragon lover or artist.Its well worth adding to the library...B.W.

Fantastic and completely comprehensive pictorial book of heraldic designs. Much needed to complete a fairly obscure project I was working on, and sure enough, there is another Dover book to help out. Very much worth the purchase!

Moderately useful, but all of the images are Victorian era lithograph in style, and have lost a lot of whatever flair they might have had. Color was not expected, but without blazon (heraldic description) or any other reference other than plate number, only the images are of any use. There is no table of contents, and although the images are grouped according to their central character (lion, tree, etc.), that is the extent of it. There is some mention of another archive, but not in a complete context. Hunting for it may be more of a chore than throwing your hands up and finding something else. I'm not even going to try. Also, since the images are in roughly the same style, an estimate of time period or place from one's own judgement of history is nearly impossible.
Still, there are a lot of images, and by themselves are inspirational to some extent.
Overall, not a complete waste, but not worth it, either.

A set of over 4,000 crest designs, but what a disappointment! The true heraldic craftsmen drew their inspiration from true heraldic sources, i.e. the Middle Ages. After 1600 or so heraldry went into a steep decline, culminating in the truly awful Victorian concept of depicting the 'real' thing, as opposed to the brutal and wonderful power of the symbolic art of earlier craftsmen. Thus we're stuck with 'real' lions and dragons and any kind of object, complete with shadowing. Well, the book was published in 1859, so I should have known better.... If you're interested in Victorian heraldry, it's a wonderful book. If you're interested in real heraldry it's a waste of money. Try the compilations of Sir Anthony Wagner instead. Now t h a t is true heraldic power.

While this volume provides thousands of clip art purporting to be heraldic Crests, you will not find any reference to identify which name the Crests are registered to. You will not find any reference to what the charge in the Crest means, nor will you find reference to the colors that the charges should be. What you will find are generic images resembling heraldic charges in black and white. Please note that those who are expert in heraldic Coats of Arms and Crests (and there is a distinct difference if you do not know), or those interested in improving their knowledge of them, will be deeply disappointed in this book, if you are looking for reference material. Coats of Arms are frequently and mistakenly referred to as Crests. Coats of Arms are the shields carried by knights, cavaliers, etc. during the Medieval Age, which were determined by the monarch of the country for which the knight served. To use the images of this book to put together a unique Coat of Arms for one's own family is to do so without any thought to the meaning of the charges. Each charge and each color determines a virtue recognized and honored by the monarch in the presentation of the Arms, while Crests (always displayed above the knight's helmet) are colors and charges chosen by the patriarch of the family to represent the virtues he wished to preserve in the family line. Most Western European names have coats of arms already registered with the College of Arms of that nation to represent their families and responsible dealers of these can provide them - this book will not help anyone find their own coat of arms or any explanation of their meaning.

Enlarged versions of the black-and-white heraldic designs common to most coats of arms and crests. Perfect for scanning and easily adaptable by experienced graphic designers. Originally published in smaller versions in Fairbairn's Book of Crests.