Category: Book Reviews
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James Gurney’s Living Sketchbook app
One of the most fascinating ways to see into the mind of an artist is to have the opportunity to look through their sketchbooks. This is not often possible; sketchbooks are frequently personal, full of unfinished thoughts and experiments and seldom volunteered for display by the artists themselves. When the opportunity does arise, it’s a…
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101 Great Illustrators from the Golden Age, 1890-1925
Discovering art that you love by artists whose work is new to you can be a little like meeting a person to whom you’re romantically attracted — there’s an initial rush of infatuation that is so pleasurable the feeling can be addictive. Growing up in northern Delaware (in a house a few hundred yards from…
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Lisa Ericson
Portland, Oregon based painter Lisa Ericson draws on her background in illustration and graphic design to give her compositions a strong graphic punch, often setting high-value and high chroma subjects against deep black backgrounds. The work currently showcased on her website highlights two particular themes involving juxtaposed hybrid animals — fish crossed with corals and/or…
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Adolph Menzel: Drawings and Paintings
Though I had seen a few reproductions of his work in books, I first really took notice of German artist Adolph Menzel quite a few years ago, when I encountered some of his original drawings in shows of 19th century master drawings at the Morgan Library in New York and the National Gallery in D.C.…
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Imagery from the Bird’s Home: The Art of Bill Carman
There are certain contemporary artists in the field of fantastic art whose work I find a continual delight. Notable among them is Bill Carman, who I have written about previously here on Lines and Colors. All too often, I find artists in contemporary fantasy, concept and fantastic art (as well as in “Pop Surrealism”) who…
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Portraits in the Wild, James Gurney
As I have pointed out in previous reviews, painter, illustrator and writer James Gurney has in recent years been bringing us a wealth of instructional material in the form of books, videos and his always informative and fascinating blog, Gurney Journey. Not only has he contributed significantly to the canon of contemporary art instruction (as…