Archives: Walter Foster Books

Covering more than 100 techniques and mediums for drawing, painting, and mixed media, The Everything Art Handbook is an all-inclusive, go-to resource for artists of all skill levels.

A refreshing, accessible compendium of art materials and techniques, The Everything Art Handbook is the perfect all-inclusive resource for beginning artists wanting to experiment and play with a variety of art mediums and techniques.

The Everything Art Handbook is divided into sections focusing on different types of mediums and art concepts. Each section includes a basic overview of the topic, instructions for selecting and working with the right tools and materials, step-by-step sample artwork, and helpful sidebars with advice from professional artists.

Expand and refresh your artistic skills with these and more topics:
 

• Getting started, including how to set up a studio and where to find inspiration
• Art fundamentals, such as value and light, perspective, and composition
• Color basics, including complementary colors, primaries, secondaries, and neutrals
• Drawing techniques for working with graphite, charcoal, colored pencil, pastel, pen and ink, and more
• Painting techniques for working with oil, acrylic, and watercolor
• Mixed media tools and techniques, including stamping, encaustics, and textures

Using clear, informative explanations for achieving the best results, The Everything Art Handbook is an approachable reference guide for contemporary artists of any skill level.

Step-by-Step Studio: Drawing Lifelike Subjects teaches beginning artists how to create realistic, detailed drawings in graphite pencil.

Featuring in-depth instruction on basic drawing techniques, creating texture, developing likeness, and more, Step-by-Step Studio: Drawing Lifelike Subjects is the perfect guide for you as a beginning or intermediate artist. After an introduction to basic materials and pencil techniques, four accomplished artists offer insight, tips, and step-by-step demonstrations that help create detailed, lifelike drawings of your chosen subjects, including animals, flowers, and landscapes. Learn to create texture and likeness using basic pencil techniques, understanding perspective, exploring light and shadow, developing values, and more.

• Dogs & Puppies: From a soulful Basset Hound puppy to a full-grown German Shepherd, learn to draw your chosen breed step by step.
• Flowers & Botanicals: Explains basic flower anatomy and how to render detailed still lifes and florals using basic pencil techniques to convey light and shadow.
• Beautiful Landscapes: See the world through the eyes of an artist as you recreate coastal scenes, warm cottages, and pastoral landscapes. 
• Lifelike Animals: Capture the essence of your favorite wild animals, including elephants, tigers, lions, wolves, and more.

Throughout the book, artists Diane Cardaci, Nolon Stacey, Linda Weil, and Diane Wright offer practical drawing techniques and easy-to-understand, step-by-step instruction, but also encouraging words. The journey through Step-by-Step Studio: Drawing Lifelike Subjects is not about making perfect drawings; it's about achieving likeness and drawing skills with each new project, while having a great time.

The books in the Step-by-Step Studio series introduce beginning artists to the fundamental tools and techniques of their chosen medium. Easy-to-follow, step-by-step projects help beginners hone their skills while creating artwork across a variety of subjects, from still life and landscapes to animal portraits and botanicals.

Step-by-Step Studio: Drawing Concepts offers the fundamental information beginning artists need to kick off their creative pursuits in graphite pencil.

Featuring in-depth instruction on composition, value, creating textures, using and manipulating photo references, and more, Step-by-Step Studio: Drawing Concepts is the perfect guide for you as a beginning or intermediate artist. After an introduction to art tools and materials and very basic techniques, four accomplished artists offer insight, tips, and helpful demonstrations that illustrate important art concepts and techniques. You will also find an impressive and varied selection of step-by-step projects to re-create, including still lifes, flowers, animals, landscapes, and portraits in the four sections.

• Values: Covers shapes, form, the light source, how to create depth, and the elements of design.
• Dynamic Compositions: Discusses viewpoint, the golden mean, symmetry and asymmetry, focal points, landscapes, and negative space.
• Realistic Textures: Focuses on rendering the many different textures found in traditional still lifes, animals, people, plants and flowers, and landscapes.
• Step-by-Step Exercises: Includes additional drawing projects, such as a teddy bear, landscape, horse, floral still life, portrait of a girl, and fruit and wine.

Throughout the book, artists Ken Goldman, William F. Powell, Diane Cardaci, and Carol Rosinski offer practical and easy-to-understand drawing techniques and art principles. The journey through Step-by-Step Studio: Drawing Concepts is not about making perfect drawings; it’s about making each drawing better than the one before it, while having a great time.

The books in the Step-by-Step Studio series are project driven and introduce beginning artists to the fundamental tools and techniques of their chosen medium. Easy-to-follow step-by-step projects help beginners hone their skills while creating artwork across a variety of subjects, from still life and landscapes to animal portraits and botanicals.

Color Mixing Recipes for Watercolor is the definitive color-mixing resource for watercolor artists. With a wide spectrum of paint recipes, each revealing the color proportions and dilution level needed to achieve the featured swatch, this user-friendly book also includes a color-mixing grid that makes measuring simple.

Follow these four simple steps to mix more than 450 color combinations:

1. Look in the Color Guidance Index for the subject you want to paint—for example, "Eucalyptus Bark."
2. Find the Color Recipe with the subject's recipe number ("293") and an example of the actual paint mixture.
3. Use the Color Mixing Grid to measure each paint color.
4. Mix the color.

It’s that easy! You’ll also learn about color theory, mixingvalues, graying color naturally, mixing portrait colors, and more.

Also available from Walter Foster's best-selling Color Mixing Recipes series: 1,500 Color Mixing Recipes for Oil, Acrylic & Watercolor; Color Mixing Recipes for Oil & Acrylic; Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits; and Color Mixing Recipes for Landscapes.

Featuring an array of adorable pets and majestic wildlife, this exceptional 144-page book offers simple, step-by-step instructions for creating dozens of incredibly lifelike animal drawings.

Inside, five talented artists reveal their professional secrets for drawing all the features that are unique to our furry and feathered friends—from wet noses and expressive eyes to thick fur and delicate whiskers. The book opens with essential information about drawing tools and materials, followed by instruction on how to approach and render a subject––such as transferring a photo reference, building up forms with basic shapes, creating perspective, and pencil techniques such as shading and blending.

Then the authors demonstrate their unique approaches to drawing through an array of inspiring projects, guiding you from initial sketches through the detailed shading process to the finishing touches. As you progress from project to project, you will find a range of helpful topics, such as portraying accurate proportions, creating dynamic compositions, and using colored pencils. Each section features a different artist, with the themes:

• Baby animals in graphite pencil, including a bunny, foal, bear cub, and lamb
• Dogs and cats in graphite pencil, including a husky, Dalmation, Maine Coon cat, and Ocicat
• Horses and ponies in graphite pencil, including a an Arabian, Appaloosa, and Dappled pony
• Wild animals in graphite pencil, including an elephant, owl, tiger cub, and koala
• Animals in colored pencil, including a rooster, leopard, box turtle, and cow

Packed with convincing illustrations and expert instruction, The Art of Drawing Animals is a comprehensive and indispensable resource for all artists smitten with the animal kingdom.

Draw unique cartoon characters using simple geometric shapes!

In Cartooning Made Easy: Circle, Triangle, Square, professional artist and My Modern Met contributor Margherita Cole offers easy-to-follow instruction for using basic shapes to draw cute cartoon characters.

Her approach is simple: All you need are basic drawing tools and shapes to cartoon! The book features dozens of drawing projects and step-by-step instruction perfect for beginning and aspiring artists, cartoonists, illustrators, pen and graphite artists, and many others.

Each project combines simple geometric shapes—including circles and triangles and squares but also ovals, rectangles, and more—to draw adorable, cartoon-inspired artwork, including cartoon:

• Heads
• Faces
• Bodies
• Unique characters
• Animals, such as elephants
• And more!

Cartooning can be easy—with the right instruction! Learn to draw cartoon characters and more using geometric shapes with Cartooning Made Easy: Circle, Triangle, Square.