Techniques Books

This is a clear and concise review of different watercolors and their properties. It is well written and understandable with many examples and lesson illustrated in the book. It is a must for any artist who uses watercolor whether they are a beginner or more advanced in the use of color.

I just read the reviews of my book for the first time and am really so appreciative and pleased! As a teacher, the purpose of this book was to share what I've learned - hoping that I could write it and show it and communicate it. It looks like it works - and that is the greatest pleasure possible for me. The book took me two years to write and paint - but two years well spent. Hope some of you readers will visit my website, [...] - and come to a workshop! I'd love to meet you!!!

She exhibits an enthusiasm to try different color combinations than you might not have tried before. Very important to have someone who has as much experience as she has to encourage you to experiment. Nicely done.

Ditto the above reviews.
Jan Hart has painted and written an excellent book on color. I would say one of the top 2 or 3 I have found during 30 plus years of painting and study, and I have read and studied a lot of them. Constant insightful tips of using color, constant color circles painted with sets of pigments, very specific as to the colors used. Many, many color examples and paintings further clarify the well-written text. Frequently there are 3 or more color illustrations on a single page, all of them with Jan's crystal clean and clear, beautiful watercolors (except there are some included paintings by other artists). Every serious watercolorist should own, read, and study this book. It is much more valuable that its selling price.

Jan Hart has written articles for Daniel Smith Paints, most on her "amazing mixes"--unusual blends of watercolor that give luminous results in mainly landscapes. If you enjoyed seeing her articles and work (which really glows with subtle and startling color) then this book has a lot more of her way of mixing paints.

Though landscape and botanicals seem to be her major love, the book also has animals, buildings, seascapes, skies and other subjects. She shows them in variations. There is no attempt to reproduce reality exactly--instead, Hart shows how to mix colors to get a result that dazzles the eye like fluttering leaves and bluish shadows on a bright, sunlit day.

There is a section at the end on Daniel Smith Primatek colors. These are natural pigments made of ground stones and earths. They are sometimes less colorful and bright than synthetic paints, but Hart shows how to use their unusual granulating properties along with more traditional watercolor pigments to gain some eyecatching mixes.

This book is a good tutorial for those who want to break away from the standard three to eight color palette and try for something different.

"Watercolor School" by Hazel Harrison states on its book jacketthat it is "a practical guide to painting with watercolor." This is an accurate description of this really useful book. It is complete in every aspect, and even for the more experienced watercolorist it can be used as an exceptionally valuable informational source. What more can I say? It's a great book.

Over the years, I have bought many watercolor books to help me get started painting with watercolor. I wish I had found this one first. It has the basics and more. The techniques and demonstrations are illustrated extremely well. The text is easy to follow, too. In some cases, it even gives two approaches to painting the same subject matter. Good color theory, too. I know I will use this now and into the future.

I am just a beginner, and this books helps me learn the basics, and encourages me to try and get better.

I'm a serious beginner and I chose this book for what it offered and then was surprised to notice that it's a Reader's Digest book (sorry, but I guess I'm a bit of a book snob). Well nevermind because it's a terrific book. Hazel Harrison walks you through a huge variety of watercolor techniques. Great lessons and reference.

I would have appreciated specific paint colors and brands with each example/technique, but even without that it's a very valuable resource.

This is an excellent book. I have been painting for many years and
still learned a lot from reading it. In this case I bought it as a
gift because I liked my copy so much.

I've read other books about finding life's purpose and calling, but they often do not give you the tool just to do that. This book does!

I've been using the Calling Card exercises to help my family and friends discovering their life's callings. It's a very easy and effective tool to find life's calling.

Books like this do everything in their power to get your drive going. And every time I read one (which isn't often), I do feel good about myself. But in the end, I'm back on Earth a few days later. OK, I am sounding pathetic, but the truth is, there isn't a whole lot of practical advice here, just motivational anecdotes. To be frank, there is nothing wrong with that. It just needs more to distinguish itself.

It starts out promising with the part about choosing the characteristics you most want in a job. However, it goes downhill with the straight out of "Touch By an Angel" cabbie stories that start every chapter. What I really did like about this book is that it makes you reevaluate the situation you are currently in to make the most of it. It doesn't preach dropping everything and chasing after your dream because not all of us are in a position to do so. Another thing I liked is that it keeps the message short (under 200 pages). There is no need for a book like this to be 300+ pages. All in all, it's a good starter book for those looking to make a career change.

This book helped me put a Name Tag on my life's calling.
I also found out how often I am able to use it in my job (only 10% of the time).
Now I need to know what jobs I could get that would maximize my use of my gifts - so I will never have to 'work' another day.

There are 52 transcendant calling cards from which everyone can pick their gifts. There were not enough examples of how people use their callings appropriately. I would have at least wanted to see a list to match jobs to calling cards.

I highly recommend this book. I've been trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up for a long time. Now I finally am able to put a name to it.
I got the book from the library, I wouldn't recommend buying it.

Get control of your career and your expectations of what career means in your life. This book does a great job of guiding you along as you question where you are in life and where you want to be. Redundant at times and interactive "take control books" usually don't appeal to me, but this one is an expection.

Davey is a great guy. He rides his bike all over Seattle. He wears really cool glasses too. I'm honored to be mentioned in the book. Dave is a great writer and philosopher. Everyone should buy this book and give copies of it as gifts to their friends.

This book is wonderful. Stunning photographs of all types of dogs in the neatest settings. Everyone I've shown it to (I bought it on my lunch hour at work) has loved it and walked away with a smile on their face. It's like a mini therapy session.

This was exactly the book I needed for research....I do dog portraits for pet lovers.

This is a lovely, feel-good book, that's just right for when you need reminding of the important things in life. Rachael Hale has the knack of sensitively capturing the beauty in every dog. A must for dog lovers.

Put a smile on my face. It is a wonderful book for dog lovers and maybe for those who arent. You will definately appreciate your 4 legged friend after looking at this. It will inspire you to capture more of your shared "great moments" with your pet by taking pictures to have for a lifetime.

We have given this delightful book to family members and friends and everyone has loved it. The photographs are wonderful! The author/photographer really captures her subjects very well. It is a great gift for anyone who loves dogs.

I purchased this book through a book club and found it to be PACKED with useful information and illustrations. Every crocheter from beginners to experienced will find something helpful in this book.

This is a very complete book on basic crocheting. It includes a section on dyeing yarn which I have not seen other places. Unfortunately, none of the "trade secrets" are very secret. Most can be found in the Crochet Handbook, which is better sized to take with you and covers foundations other than the chain. Couldn't find those here. Also, many interesting patterns were shown in pictures that were not really explained in the text. A pretty picture book and probably a good read for a new crocheter, but for the more experienced, nothing really new.

I'm basically a knitter who crochets a little and not that well. This book answered all my questions and gave me projects that I've been inspired to make. I learned to make roses, ruffles, and more complicated crochet patterns. It renewed my interest in crochet. Unless you're already a master this book is very helpful.

I have been crocheting for many, many years but this book explained things simply with great photos. It answered a lot of questions I have had and showed me new ways to do things. I would highly recommend this for the beginner as well as for the experienced crocheter.

I have had this book for several months and I am just now getting excited about it. There are excellent colorful photos on every page, there are a lot of techniques and each step is illustrated well. When I first got this book I was disappointed because I was really hoping that those trade secrets as the title suggests would jump out at me. But, on closer inspection I have found that there are indeed valuable tips on making my crocheted work better. I think this book will help immensely when I feel creative and want to design my own stuff. However, most of the tips are a page or less, and I would have liked to have seen some of them expanded a bit. Overall I would recommend this to anyone who crochets and would like some ideas to spark their creativity.

I've worked in publishing for over a decade and thought I knew it all when it came time to get my own books published. Not by a LONG shot! I bought this on the suggestion of an editor and I bet I've referred to it 32 times since I got it. It helped me get through the first and second steps of the process. Now if my agent can just get my books sold!

Great coverage of markets and their needs. I recommend this highly if you are a writer for children. Do not go very far without this book!

2002 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market is a very highly useful and authoritative guide for both aspiring authors and artists to getting their work published in the specialized area of children's books. From finding the best markets, to writing effectively for the age index of one's choice, to preparing professional submissions, 2002 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market is packed from cover to cover with solid wealth of tips, tricks, and techniques on how to stand out in a highly competitive field. 2002 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market is an absolutely essential reference, especially for new writers and novice artists looking to break into the children's book market.

This is THE book if you want to get published. 2002 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market shows over 800 editors and art directors who want to buy what YOU write or illustrate. I am planning to try get publihed. And this was my resource! I've already found tons of publishers! If you want to get published, then this is your book!

Great coverage of markets and their needs. I recommend this highly if you are a writer for children. Do not go very far without this book!

This is one of my favorite 500 books. It is the perfect book for those days when inspiration is hard to find!

I bought this book and looked through it with post its to label all the interesting teapot ideas I was drawn to. When considering this book, I wasn't particularly drawn to the cover teapot and wondered if I would be disappointed in the authors picks, but I wasn't. This is a great visual resource for my classroom and studio.

As someone else has commented, I would have given this book 5 stars if the author hadn't repeated multiple photos of very similar teapots by the same artist.

As a ceramics teacher who teaches her students how to build teapots, this book is a wonderful resource. The pictures are great and it helps give students a better understanding of what a teapot can look like.

500 TEAPPOTS is an wonderful book and is sure to inspire both potters and tea drinkers alike. It is a wonderful companion to 500 BOWLS. I hope they publish ANOTHER 500 TEAPOTS (BOWLS, too).

But if I were a little teapot, I'd be one of the beautiful ones in this book. There are teapots both plain, and beyond description to fascinate, amuse and amaze you. If you know a little about firing ceramics, and glaze technology, the information provided will deepen your appreciation of each teapot. You may find that some of these artists are in your area, and have ceramics for sale. Or if you just like teapots, there enough teapots here in beautiful color photos to sate your appetite.

This is one of the better books about PMBOK-based ProjectManagement. But what I really miss, is a practical explanation of how to switch theory to reality. For example: The PMBOK defines 44 processes. Some of them have to be done one time (e.g. defining a Project Charter), but many process steps have to be done daily, weekly, monthly and with different participants. So, what I miss is a description how to organize all these processes during a concrete project including a project plan with all these process steps defined as meetings.
This book is a really good introduction to PM and it helps to understand every PMBOK process. But when trying to use this methodology in daily work, you dont know what steps to do with whom and when. I simply miss a kind of project calendar showing how to spread these processes over the timeline.

I have been practicing project management/program management and PMO management for 40 years. This is not only a great reference book for all PM's of any sophistication but it should be the Textbook for Technical Colleges and Universities for Project Management courses. I hold it in the same group as the Capers & Jones book on software engineering

I have re-read a number of books immediately after reading them for the first time. Re-reading well-written fiction is of course a pleasure, but I usually reserve this technique for non-fiction that is hard to understand or very dense, and I may re-read immediately after the first read or months or years later.

This book is the first I have decided to re-read before I even finished it. The information presented is so full of useful knowledge that I realized I would forget most of the points while I was taking in the newer stuff. With the diagrams and summaries there is a vast amount of content here.

I have one small criticism that I'd like to make. The book shows common-sense techniques for project management, and on subjects like this we feel we could do the job based on instinct. I think that the book, instead of being almost exclusively saying DO THIS, should have a few examples of DON'T DO THIS. Stories that involve mistakes and disasters tend to make the lesson more memorable.

I have written several books, and I have rarely been more impressed at how the author handles huge amounts of information.

Anyway, this book is worth five stars.

EDIT: Forgot to mention it, but the book has a dangerous typo. On page 208, the book says "Exclude" but the word intended is "Exude" - in this case, that's almost 180 degrees from the intended meaning.

And a big Hi! to my loyal fans. Glad you trust what I say.

I've read 10 books on PM in the last 3 years. Without a doubt this is the most practical one I've read. It takes PM theory and goes much further than other beginner's guides to actually telling you how to do apply the theory in the real world. The mind maps are particularly good. I have used these maps extensively for operations staff training and brain storming for phase planning. Highly recommended reading.

As I am taking the responsibilities of a technical leader, I am being introduced more and more into the concepts of project management, and this book has helped me a lot understanding and getting insights into the subject. Compact, rich, simple, and assumes no prior project management experience. I would recommend it for anyone who is entering a senior position (especially in the software development industry).

This may be Sontag's most rigorous and important collection of essays, complete with topics ranging from Levi-Strauss to Godard. In it is her famous essay "On Camp," which would later make her a superstar in the New York artistic community.

Sontag is worried about intellectual interpretation, the erudite and narrow approach to understanding a work of art. She calls on us to "show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means." Her approach is far reaching and yet acute and highly attuned to the intellectual aspects of the fine arts.

This collection includes fabulous essays on Sartre, Bresson, Beckett, Lukacs, Resnais, and many others. It is evidence of her astonishing ability to think seriously and with tremendous beauty about that which is most important.

I went to this collection after recently purchasing Camille Paglia's latest critical reading of forty-three poems in Break, Blow, Burn. In the dust cover notes, Paglia is described as "America's premier intellectual provocateur." I had always thought that honor belonged to Sontag.

Sontag's collection contains some of her most famous essays and some rather obscure ones. Instead of the most famous, I found myself re-reading the less widely discussed ones, like the essay "Godard's Vivre Sa Vie" and "Happenings: an art of radical juxtaposition" and "A note on novels and films." These essays gave me something new to think about and re-introduced me to Sontag's renowned intellect. They inspired me to buy a few Godard DVDs from Amazon, to attend the Festival of New French Cinema here in Chicago this past weekend and they caused me to ruminate on the contemporary examples of "happenings."

Whether you agree with Sontag's opinions or not, you will probably agree after reading this selection that the depth and breadth of her interests and knowledge is impressive. And she thought and wrote about things that most, even academics, had not been willing to take on. For that, we should be appreciative. For her willingness to be a true public intellectual, we should be grateful. For her legacy to the realm of critical theory, we are indebted.

Critical writing serves to introduce a reader to non-mainstream writers when it is well done. This is well done. Sontag was a writer and thinker of high caliber. Her special interests in French literature, film, and psychoanalysis are highlighted in this collection of essays.
Discussions of form and content in art recall the art theory of the Greeks of art as representation. Interpretation is a conscious state of mind interpreting a code. Interpretation is a radical strategy conserving an old text. It is the modern way of understanding something. Flight from interpretation seems to be a feature of modern painting. Films may have a liberating anti-symbolic quality. To be able to experience art on several levels is a matter of redundancy. Unfortunately, the author contends, redundancy is a principal affliction of modern life.

All agree that style and content are indissoluble. The duality persists, nevertheless, particularly in criticism. Style necessarily persists. Even realism is in truth a stylistic convention. Stylization reflects ambivalence. Morality is a code of acts. Art performs a moral task. Genet's books are both works of art and works about art. Great art overrides everything else. Nietzsche held that art is a metaphysical supplement to nature. Art exists at a distance from reality. An artist's style is a particular idiom.

Cesare Pavese showed delicacy, economy, and control. Sontag deems Pavese to have been more gifted than Silone and Moravia. Pavese felt literature was a defense against the attacks of life. The writings of Camus embody moral beauty, not artistic or intellectual beauty. To Claude Lewvi-Strauss being an anthropologist is a total occupation. Anthropologists exploit their own intellectual alienation.

The critic Georg Lukacs had a free-wheeling speculative view of Marxism. He concentrated on nineteenth century authors and for the most part wrote in German, not Hungarian. Sartre practiced criticism as immersion. There are no guidelines. In SAINT GENET he tries to impose commitment on action. Genet's task is self-transfiguration. Ionesco discovered the poetry of cliche and language-as-thing to use in his work. Ionesco's development was the reverse of Brecht's.

Sontag identifies the supreme tragic event of the twentieth century as the murder of six million Jews. She remarks that tragedy is not an art form, but a form of history. It is appropriate to compare Rolf Hochhuth's THE DEPUTY with the Eichmann trial. Among other things, trial is a theatrical form. THE DEPUTY has a documentary intention. In her piece on Miller's AFTER THE FALL Sontag opines that Miller writes on the level of a left-wing newspaper cartoon. The classics of Broadway liberalism were too optimistic. The playwrights thought that problems could be solved. Weiss's MARAT/SADE is a play of ideas. The characters debate in it the meaning of the French Revolution.

Robert Bresson's films have a common theme, liberty and confinement. Godard's films focus on proof, not analysis. Camp, (defined by Christopher Isherwood), is something to which Sontag was drawn. It is a sensibility, a matter of subjective preferences. Taste governs every human response. Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism and it is mannerist.

In this review I have tried to give the prospective reader an impression of some of the excellent writings in this collection.

Susan Sontag has the reputation of being infinitely pretentious and self-important, which is probably true. Ordinarily I hate these qualities, but somehow I'm able to overlook them because her thought - in this collection particularly - is just that good.

"Against Interpretation" compiles nearly 30 essays dealing with works of art (literary, cinematic, theatrical, etc.). Some deal with obscure topics - "Spiritual Style In the Films of Robert Bresson", "Psychoanalysis and Norman O. Brown's 'Life Against Death'" - others have practically become household names, as is the case with the standout piece "Notes On Camp".

All the essays address aesthetic problems - often minor, but nonetheless engaging. Each essay draws you in, causing you to mull over a topic thoroughly: for example, I'd never seen Eugene Ionesco as self-absorbed and aphoristic before, but Sontag's argument about his work is so quietly persuasive, with subtle touches of mockery driving the argument further home. Same goes for her thoughts on Simone Weil.

Sontag spent her professional life making people angry and uncomfortable with her political stances, which sounded infuriating taken out of context, and surprisingly sensible when heard with an open mind. These essays show a very different side of this great thinker - but regardless of her subject, it's her quiet wit and passion that keep her work so compelling, and which make this one of my favorite books despite its obscure topics.

America has very few independent intellectuals, that is, intellectuals free of academic responsibilities and tenure. Most grub for life-long jobs and then throw away their careers on campus duties and teaching. Gore Vidal, Richard Rodriguez, Susan Sontag...there are others, I'm sure, but not many. It's nearly impossible to make a living now in journalism, so the call to academic prostitution is great. Sontag got through and deserves our praise. God knows, like other free-lance intellectuals she lacked manners and never learned to grovel the way our teachers do, trained as they are to please the young. Much like Sartre, she could be dumb and silly and arrogant, but in the end she survived the culture wars, praising excellence for its own sake and refusing to bestow the title of greatness on to every bestselling author reviewed in the NY Times. She was great and her genius lay in one small area, as far as I can see. She introduced American readers to some very exciting European film makers, theorists, and writers. She herself is a forgettable author of fiction. She had limited talent as an artist, if any, but like Edmund Wilson she brought the latest European thinkers to the attention of American readers of the New York Review of Books and other periodicals. She wrote breathlessly and exhaustively on authors of all sorts. She was capable of passion and insight. She made you fall in love with writers as diverse as Sartre, Barthes, and Canetti. For this we should be grateful. I am.

After an MFA in stage design from Yale School of Drama and 50 years of designing for the Stage and Television--starting with ten years for the Ed Sullivan Show--it was interesting to look at the whole theatrical experience as architectural. I've been dealing with the visual architecture of theater my whole life, but there is no question that all the elements fit into an architectural framework. This book is a refreshing study of that total framework. It was fun for me to see it from another perspective. I would recommend "The Architecture of Drama" highly for any one involved, in any capacity, in the production of theater or film.

Bill Bohnert

THE ARCHITECTURE OF DRAMA is an important book and will be of great interest and utility to anyone involved in bringing stories to life onstage. The book is a quick and entertaining read, full of practical insights and elucidative examples. The authors illuminate topics such as plot, theme and genre using great plays and movies as templates. They talk about subject and theme: how they're different and WHY it's vital for the playwright and director to know the difference; they talk about the ephemeral topic of style and WHY actors and designers ought to pay attention to it, or ignore it at their peril. I was reminded again, as in a master class, why a keen, working knowledge of structure and its application is necessary for every theatre professional, and certainly every student . Reminded, why indeed structure is needed for artistic liberation. If you want some inspiration before you begin working on a new production or project, read this book.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF DRAMA is the ideal balance of information and anecdote. At last, there is a text that both educates and entertains. Here is a dynamic look at dramatic structure that has a strong personal point of view; the authors are clearly not limited by academic experience but draw on years of practical fieldwork to inform the book. THE ARCHITECTURE OF DRAMA is ideal for the classroom but makes for entertaining reading. This is a must for actors, directors, and playwrights as well as the casual theatergoer.

The Architecture of Drama is fun, informative, inspirational and in today's world of "everyone has a idea that would make a great film or theatre piece", is a must have and read for the realization of those ideas and dreams. It is insightful and a guide to understanding how to write a script, but more importantly why to write in the first place. As a producer and director involved in the creation of new material I will now give this book to every artist, famous or novice, I collaborate with.

Peter Schneider
Director / Producer

The best thing I can say about this book is that it made me want to go back to school and enroll in a course taught by the writers. It is a clear, logical approach that will work equally well as a guide for directors, actors, designers and teachers. I was particularly impressed in that I think the book will be appropriate either as an introductory text or a review for advanced students and professionals. These are concepts that always bear repeating, presented with clarity and passion.