I first started art when I was nine years old, but my art journey really started after seeing the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s work at age 14. This experience changed my life and from there, I continued on with fourteen years of formal art education. The book details my experience and journey as a student, instructor, and professional artist over a thirty-year time period across three continents. I wroteAn Artist’s Odyssey to help young artists or artists transitioning into art as a profession to help them avoid the pitfalls of the art world and supplement the necessary business acumen required to make a sustainable career in the art world.
I wrote...
An Artist's Odyssey: Chasing Ghosts, Masters & The Business of Art
I wrote this book to help young artists find their path within the art world and to promote personal and professional growth within the art field. In my own experience, I found a distinct gap between studying art within the educational system and my own real world experiences as a professional artist and entrepreneur. This book is in part my attempt to create a framework to help young artists more effectively bridge that gap within their own artistic journey.
I bought this book twenty years ago and still love this book. It is such a clear and beautifully illustrated book with a very strong explanation of the different elements of drawing the human figure and how to render with powerful volume and gesture. It is a great learning tool for artists of all ages and experiences to learn from, be inspired by or just review basic principles of drawing the human figure. The way that Anthony Ryder uses colored paper as the midtone is one of the easiest and most visually powerful ways to add character and depth to any drawing.
Many of us want to learn "how to draw." But as artist Anthony Ryder explains, it's much more important to learn what to draw. In other words, to observe and draw what we actually see, rather than what we think we see. When it comes to drawing the human figure, this means letting go of learned ideas and expectation of what the figure should look like. It means carefully observing the interplay of form and light, shape and line, that combine to create the actual appearance of human form. In The Artist's Complete Guide to Figure Drawing, amateur and experienced…
Dalí. The Paintingsis one of the most complete compilations of works I’ve seen, and it includes the examination of one of the most prolific and controversial figures in art. Salvador Dali is a genius. He took his artistic skill and vision across so many different genres of the arts. The book is a fascinating journey into his mind and work. I learned a tremendous amount regarding composition, palette and tone decisions, and of course realism. I loved the idea that you can inspire the mind, leading it into new thought patterns by presenting something that is different or strange.
Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the century's greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics-and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting, approaching the subconscious with extraordinary sensitivity and imagination.
This publication presents the artist's painted oeuvre. After many years of research, Robert Descharnes and Gilles Neret finally located the paintings of this highly prolific artist. Many of the works had been inaccessible for years-in fact so many that almost half the illustrations in this book had…
For me, this book was a real education. It provided insight into how the greatest artists strive to break the rules and find interest in juxtapositioning different versions of reality and fantasy. The perfect summation, to me, of what Escher strived to do is communicated in this quote, “My topics are often playful too. I cannot stop fiddling around with our incontestable certainty. It is a pleasure, for example, to deliberately mingle two- and three-dimensions, flat and spatial and to poke fun at gravity.” One of the main takeaways from this book is to always strive to reimagine reality, break rules, be playful, and never be afraid to fail.
As beautiful and rigorous as an Escher work itself, this book is the classic study of a great maverick who so memorably linked the world of imagemaking with geometry and paradox. Escher's works, from the great master prints to numerous drawings, are brilliantly arranged to form a cinematic journey of discovery that reveals the magical world of the artist's mind, an uncharted realm lush with exotic conceptions and inventions.
Bernini shows the culmination of the Baroque era in which the artist himself played a significant part in forming and exposing how art can be an intersection between painting, sculpture, and architecture. The level of detail and expression that he can imbue his sculptures with is an experience in itself. The book also gives insight into his process, internal rules, and definitions of art as well as the historical context behind many of his works. His larger works, along with his smaller, far more personal portrait busts, are all detailed with rich photography showcasing the incredible detail of his work.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the greatest and most influential sculptor of his age. Endlessly inventive and gifted with extraordinary skill, he virtually created the Baroque style. In his religious sculptures he excelled at capturing movement and extreme emotion, uniting figures with their setting to create a single conception of overwhelming intensity that perfectly expressed the fervour of Counter-Reformation Rome. Intensity and drama also characterize his remarkable portraits and his world-famous Roman fountains.
Rudolf Wittkower's classic monograph and catalogue raisonne has been the standard established work on Bernini since 1955. It is now available in an updated and expanded edition.…
Rembrandt is a fascinating journey through Rembrandt’s paintings and also his lesser-known (to the general public) prints. It’s also a chronological roadmap of his works from his early years until his final period. Watching his progression and the mastery in his latest period was a true learning process of how ‘less’ can be ‘far more.’ In the works displayed in the book, Rembrandt shows his skill at wringing every last bit of functionality out of each color in a very limited palette and also the cornucopia of atmospheric density he played with so masterfully to push and pull the viewers’ eye.
Susan Tate Ankeny left a career in teaching to write the story of her father’s escape from Nazi-occupied France. In 2011, after being led on his path through France by the same Resistance fighters who guided him in 1944, she felt inspired to tell the story of these brave French patriots, especially the 17-year-old- girl who risked her own life to save her father’s. Susan is a member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, the Air Force Escape and Evasion Society, and the Association des Sauveteurs d’Aviateurs Alliés.
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States history to earn a pilot's license, and the first female Asian American pilot to fly for the military.
Her achievements, passionate drive, and resistance in the face of oppression as a daughter of Chinese immigrants and a female aviator changed the course of history. Now the remarkable story of a fearless underdog finally surfaces to inspire anyone to reach toward the sky.
One of WWII’s most uniquely hidden figures, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, join the WASPs, and fly for the United States military amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and policies.
Her singular story of patriotism, barrier breaking, and fearless sacrifice is told for the first time in full for readers of The Women with Silver Wings by Katherine Sharp Landdeck, A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, The Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown and all Asian American, women’s and WWII history books.…
Interested in
art,
classical antiquity,
and
drawing?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
art,
classical antiquity,
and
drawing.
