Category: Reviews
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Xenozoic
Long time readers of Lines and Colors will know of my fascination with dinosaurs and paleo art, my fondness for science fiction and adventure stories and their accompanying illustrations, my admiration for the beautiful ink drawings of classic illustrators, the inspired adventure comic strips from the 1930’s and 1940’s that carried their traditions forward, and…
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Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter
Color. What other factor in art is so simultaneously fascinating and frustrating for artists? Numerous books have been written on the subject; some are less than worthwhile, some are good, some are excellent, and a few have become so relied on that over time they have become standards. Each takes a certain approach to the…
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Learning to draw: where to go from here
Tim, a Lines and Colors reader, wrote me to say that he had recently become inspired to return to the practice of drawing. He had purchased a copy of Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (see my post here), and was looking for other books and resources to pursue his interest…
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The Legend of Steel Bashaw, Petar Meseldžija
Serbian artist Petar Meseldžija, who I wrote about in 2008, has a career that has included outstanding work in comics, illustration, posters and gallery art. He has taken elements from all aspects of his skill range and applied them to the classic form of the illustrated storybook in The Legend of Steel Bashaw, an adaptation…
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Postcard from Provence: Paintings by Julian Merrow-Smith
Once upon a time, there was an English painter who moved to Provence, a part of southern France long associated with artists seeking the colors nature might reveal to them in the region’s legendary sunlight. This painter was not working in the time of the Barbizon School and the Impressionists, however, but in the blossoming…
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Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn’t Exist
There are hundreds of art instruction books out there, with a wide range of topics, approaches and degrees of value, but Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn’t Exist by renowned painter, illustrator and Dinotopia artist James Gurney, is exceptional in several ways. Before I go too far, I’ll point out that although this is…