At Yeovil School of Art in Somerset from 1953-1957, Derek Boshier demonstrated the graphic abilities - via a sketchbook of pencil and ink drawings, some coloured with crayon or gouache - of local scenes and European townscapes such as Vourbourg, Amsterdam (fig.5) that have characterised so much of his subsequent work. These images, based on direct observation, have made a lively contribution to social realism. Boshier was the subject of the innovative 1962 TV documentary Pop Goes the Easel, directed by Ken Russell for the BBC's prestigious art strand Monitor. Boshier became a formidable figure in contemporary art, springing from the British Pop Art movement of the 1960s alongside Sir Peter Blake and David Hockney with whom he studied at the Royal College of Art in the very next booth. His engagement with politics and popular culture is notable through his work with David Bowie and The Clash, and in the 21st century he remains a challenging and vibrant spirit, regularly exhibiting new work alongside younger artists. The book title is named after Bryan Ferry's first song on Roxy Music's debut LP. It traces the artist?s career and subsequent abandonment of painting in the late 1960s and 70s during which time Boshier investigated assemblages and collage, book works, set design and illustration as well as photography, film and sculpture. This experimentation with fresh modes of expression included record sleeve and stage sets for Bowie, and the visually explosive CLASH 2nd Songbook, and his role in curating the controversial group show Live at the Hayward Gallery in 1979. Relocation to Los Angeles in the 1990s provided Boshier with rich source material. Hollywood, celebrity, tabloid culture, US foreign policy and technology are preoccupations, the latter manifested by the use of smartphones and apps as recurring motifs. Recently Boshier has created new film works using his iPad. The book features essays by leading academics, curators, critics and practitioners and includes 302 big bold colourful illustrations. A Thames & Hudson 2015 first edition, 24 x 29.5cm.
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You don't have to be an artist to achieve great results on your iPad, and this refreshingly accessible book is perfect for skilled artists and aspiring creatives alike. There are step-by-step projects that teach the fundamentals of digital painting and easy and fun tricks that anyone can try. A glossary covers abstraction, composition, contour, tone, vanishing point and warm and cool colours, and there is a study of Monet's Water Lilies, so go crazy with those beautiful reds, pinks and purples, yellows and cool background and observe how the lilies are arranged in a Z shape, an effective path for the eyes to create movement and depth. In fact you can activate whole paintings and understand the layers and how they were created as you hone your skills. Decorate your puppy picture with extra coloured patches above the eyes and different patterns on the ears and a mat for him to sit on. A portrait of a cat captures his very expressive eyes and is really quite realistic. So too are some of the portraits of actual people from photographs or something more kitsch and iconic like the good old pink plastic garden flamingo. Try your hand at Van Gogh's Sunflowers but begin with very simple line drawings and understanding the tools on your iPad with through expert tutorials. 144pp, large paperback, colour.

This book is a sheer delight, showcasing over 100 magazine covers from the late 1950s onwards, with a commentary on the inside story of each by editors and designers. Magazine covers need to make their impact according to the 5/5 rule (within five seconds from five feet away). There has to be an arresting image, complementary wording, and above all the cover as a whole distils a cultural moment. In autumn 1962, just after Marilyn Monroe's death, the cover of Eros magazine featured a photographer's contact sheet showing stills of Marilyn from a shoot she had done six weeks before. In April 1968 the boxer Muhammad Ali had been sentenced to imprisonment for being a conscientious objector, and the cover photo of Esquire magazine shows him in his white shorts transfixed with arrows in imitation of medieval paintings of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Private Eye's February 1965 cover featured a cartoon of Winston Churchill by Gerald Scarfe, one of the few really sharp satirical cartoonists at the time, showing the old man not in bulldog mode but hunched and decrepit. Vogue magazine of March 1966 captures Donyale Luna looking out at the viewer from behind her carefully manicured hand, the first woman of colour to feature on Vogue. The photographer was David Bailey and he describes how he got the best out of his nervous subject. The feminist Spare Rib was launched in 1972 as an antidote to fashion magazines, with a casual photo of two women wearing no make-up. Time Out has had some startling covers, including the green-all-over issue on jealousy in 1973. In 1977 the violence of the modern game of cricket was captured for Radio Times by Ralph Steadman's cartoon of bowler Dennis Lillee. In 1981 Rolling Stone magazine featured a naked John Lennon embracing a clothed Yoko Ono, photographed hours before he was shot, and in September 2001 the New Yorker's apparently black cover in fact faintly features the twin towers. Every cover in this superb book tells us something about ourselves. 256pp, over 100 colour reproductions.
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To search for van Gogh means to retrace his actual physical path to the mental states that inspired his art. It means to take our understanding of art and geography and apply at what we know of Vincent's feelings and musings on life, art, books and authors, or found in the vast collection of letters 820 in all, 658 of which were addressed to his brother Theo, dating between 1872 and 1890. For months two talented photographers retraced van Gogh's path on foot, or by train, following him from Holland to England, and on to Belgium and France. They wanted to use the magic of photography to re-create what Vincent had imagined on canvas, and in this special book, the two are set by side-by-side. One of the photographers died in 2015, and today it would no longer be possible to photograph these places as they did for the book. "I have a larger picture of the village church and effect in which the building appears to be violet-hued against the sky of simple, deep blue colour, pure cobalt. The stained-glass windows appear as ultramarine blotches. The roof is violet, and partly orange in the foreground, some green plants in bloom and sand with the pink flow of sunshine in it." These are van Gogh's own words of his church at Auvers; his painting is reproduced and on the facing page in a colour photograph of the church on a sunny day. Enjoy his visions of the moon and the stars and the nebula, his chair, bed and nightstand, the Bridge of the Englishman, self portraits of the artist as a young man, the Rue de la Gallette and windmills, a room with a view of Paris in the heart of Montmartre, prostitutes and brothels and houses and people and of course, chrome yellow and sunflower orange. Art historian Gloria Fossi examines van Gogh's personal and artistic journey, combining a deep knowledge of place and art with what is known of his feelings in an art volume the like of which we have never seen before. 240 very large pages with colour, reproductions, colour photos, maps, and archive images.
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Here is a practical guide to drawing and painting surfaces on canvas and paper to textiles and woods because every surface you draw on impacts everything in your artwork, from its texture and brightness to its colour and durability. Learn the basics of working on canvas, paper, panels, textiles, wood, metal, glass, stone and silk plus useful tips and techniques for preparing your supports and protecting your finished artwork. Paper comes in a variety of formats - pads and books, rolls and loose sheets and in types such as newsprint which is thin and inexpensive for creating loose sketches, kraft paper made of wood pulp and very strong, drawing paper varying in weight and colour, handmade paper, mould-made paper, Bristol board of multiple layers up to 4-ply and illustration board mounted to a hard core surface, marker paper or watercolour paper for fluid washes and available in three textures - hot-pressed, cold-pressed and rough - for you to choose depending on your painting style and the visual effects you want to achieve. Packed with visual examples, step-by-step tutorials and demonstrations to maximise your results in a variety of media. Vibrant colour illustrations and photographs, 112 page large softback.

Sub-titled 'The Life and Achievements of a Self-Taught Polymath, Artist and Wit from Devonshire', John Cranch was born in the same small town in the same year that Gray's Elegy was published. Taught to read and write but little else, only his own personality and talent allowed him to break free to become a respected lawyer, scholar and artist. But his story would be a dry one if thought of only in terms of social mobility, because even across two centuries his strivings, disappointments and successes have a modern human appeal. Significant amounts of his own writing and letters have survived, and the numerous quotations in this biography allow his own voice to speak to us. This took on greater historical significance when he was writing to relatives and acquaintances caught up in the events surrounding the birth of the independent United States of America. One important fact is that his uncle Richard Cranch was the brother-in-law and great friend of John Adams, second President of the United States. When John Cranch's (1751-1821) paintings appeared at auction in the 20th century, the importance of his art was finally appreciated. As a painter he often depicted domestic life of ordinary people and tradesman, popular themes of Dutch art in the period but not fashionable in England for some time afterwards. His role as mentor to the young John Constable is acknowledged nowadays. What should also be acclaimed to his fame was his pioneering antiquarian work, but despite the importance attached to preservation of ancient things, he sought to alert the world to their destruction. Cranch never married or had children. He appreciated the work of the blue stocking author Hannah More and this polymath certainly noted the talents of others which may have led to his near abandonment of his legal practice, which bored him. Long periods of his life were spent in Kingsbridge and Axminster in Devonshire, London and finally Bath. 203pp, illustrations.

Let's experiment in our art with building up a surface texture, using washes on a sand background, fabric or paper wrinkles, backgrounds with a heavy texture or a still life with a textured gesso background. Using mediums and gels, as modifiers of fluidity, modelling paste, transparency with textures, impasto with a brush or spatula, we can copy or learn for example from the style of Oskar Kokoschka. Add fillers to paint, create a landscape with acrylics or oils over modelling paste and study the style of Julian Schnabel. In the third section Painting Over Textures we look at dripping paint, washes, glazes with acrylics, using newsprint for volume, varnish and wrinkles, wax, a landscape with organic materials, using objects in collage, relief with foam, crackled paint and other atypical textures. The effects are truly stunning and your artworks will definitely be original. Looks great fun as well, with super exercises to follow and a simple text. Packed with colour images, 96pp. One of the excellent Barron's publications.

Discover original modernist design in a 100 year history of graphic news items and their trailblazing influence on the emerging Avant-Garde movements. An illustrated press where the images are as important as the text has become an increasingly rare art form. This weighty compendium celebrates the golden age of graphic journalism as a distinct and unique genre and a laboratory for developing avant-garde aesthetics. Spanning from 1819 to 1921, the collection covers a broad range of news graphics and political and satirical cartoons. Alongside the works of renowned artists such as Jean Cocteau, Juan Gris, and Käthe Kollwitz, the most famous illustrators of the time are also well represented. Thomas Nast, Honoré Daumier, Gustave Doré and the numerous relatively unknown press graphic artists, the so-called ?special artists,? whose work is rediscovered here. Their rich and varied press work is considered not only in connection to the genre and the historical painting of the 19th century but also in its capacity as a pioneering influence on modern art. With striking examples of proto-cinematic narrative thinking, disruptions of the single image space, and daring forays into abstraction, this material is shown to have laid the groundwork for much of the avant-garde artistic expression that followed. The book also explores Vincent Van Gogh's careful attention to the illustrated press of his time. He was inspired not only by the artistic aspect of it but also by the spirit of social reform that it represented. An avid collector, he owned a large number of press graphics and went so far as to consider it a "Bible for Artists". 604 huge heavy pages, 25.5 x 5 x 37.3 cm. Text in English, French and German. Published 12th May 2023, hot-off-the-press from Taschen. All in colour.

The first monograph to be published on the work of Barry Flanagan (1941-2009), one of Britain's preeminent sculptors which includes over 200 colour reproductions and a newly compiled chronology. This splendid heavyweight tome charts his life and work to his first exhibition in London at the Rowan gallery in 1966, and his last sculptures made in Ibiza in 2009. Flanagan graduated from St Martin's School of Art where he had established a reputation as a leading figure of the avant-garde, as a writer of concrete poetry, and as a pataphysician, espousing Alfred Jarry's science of imaginary solutions. He received international critical acclaim for his intuitive and inventive approach to his materials which aligned him with new art practices and the emergent art movements of Arte Povera, Land Art and Process Art. From 1972, reassessing the function of public sculpture, Flanagan began to explore more traditional materials working with stone and bronze for which he is now best known. His characterful Hares are found displayed in numerous public spaces; he was drawn to the animal for its anthropomorphic potential and rich cultural iconography. Flanagan was born in Prestatyn in 1941 to a family of music hall performers and was himself an accomplished dancer and a keen cellist. The lyrical, structural and spatial qualities of music remained a constant influence on his preoccupations which infused his creative approach and poetry and architecture were also fundamental to his practice of three dimensional art. He lived in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin and Ibiza as well as New York where he took a suite at the Chelsea Hotel and described himself as 'an itinerant sculptor'. In 1991 he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts and was awarded the OBE. Here are his hares moving through the landscape, leaping, darting and in the mating season on its hind legs, boxing. As a nocturnal creature it is often associated with the Moon, creativity and fertility and by some religions regarded diabolical, a sign of primeval magic. On page 11 is an absolutely glorious leaping hare. It is the first of two tipped-in illustrations, a rare technique in book form these days, followed by literally hundreds of colour and black and white examples, mostly full page from his magnificent sculptures such as in Grant Park Chicago, a dog in bronze photographed in close up, an elephant with a hare balanced on its head, smooth polished tumbling stones, a magnificent horse and several human nudes (accompanied by the hare) to acrobatic hares, bookend hares and a cellist hare sitting thoughtfully on its plinth. 150 colour reproductions, 288 huge pages. 11¼ x 16".
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In 1893, George Allen the publisher gave Hugh Thomson (1860-1920) a commission to illustrate Pride and Prejudice. Already well known for his delightfully humorous and accurate drawings of 18th century life, this book features illustrations from Mansfield Park and Emma, and clearly shows his talent for capturing the moods and personalities of Jane Austen's characters with great humour and affection. These delightful pen and ink sketches have been beautifully reproduced on glossy white paper, one or two per page, with a quotation from the novels. The first is 'In vain did Lady Bertram smile and make her sit on the sofa with herself and Pug.' - Fanny Price and Lady Bertram. All the characters of Henry and his sister Mary Crawford, Mr Elton admiring Emma's artwork, Mr Weston talking to his wife, referring to Frank Churchill having asked Emma for the first two dances and finally 'He stopped to look the question.' - Mr George Knightley proposes to Emma. 33 illustrations covering the two novels in this volume, a companion with code 93287 and 93288. Paperback.