Archives: Walter Foster Books
You will love learning to work with ink, pencil, and watercolor as you create your own favorite plants and flowers. Step-by-step projects feature popular flowers, including poppies, peonies, roses, freesias, snapdragons, and more, for a wide variety of well-loved plants that many of us have in our own gardens and/or see while out and about. The Illustration Studio series features interactive exercises, creative prompts, and step-by-step exercises to educate and excite beginning and aspiring artists working in a variety of media and techniques, from manga and anime to illustration done in ink.
Illustration Studio: Inking Florals opens with an introduction to plant structure. Essential tools and materials are covered as well, and then you can learn all about drawing basics, ink shading tips, and watercolor techniques so that you have some basic knowledge before getting started on the more than 15 step-by-step drawing projects that round out the book. The final project is a bouquet that incorporates all of the instructions and tips that you have learned throughout the book. Each project in the book makes a beautiful keepsake item or gift for a loved one.
With Illustration Studio: Inking Florals, you can learn to draw, ink, and add watercolor to all of your favorite botanicals!
Geared for beginning artists, En Plein Air: Light & Color introduces a variety of techniques for on-location watercolor painting. Following a brief introduction to the basics of painting en plein air and an overview of the necessary tools and materials, you will learn how to choose a subject and paint a compelling outdoor composition using the subtleties of watercolor to create beautifully expressive subjects and themes.
Other important topics include perspective, rendering the background and foreground, capturing both urban and pastoral landscapes, mastering color to convey weather and time of day, and much more. From choosing just the right subject to awaiting the perfect time of day, let En Plein Air: Light & Color guide you in your artistic travels as you explore this daring and expressive medium.
Painting outdoors is a rewarding, peaceful experience full of joy, adventure, and persistence. Let the En Plein Air Series guide you in your artistic travels as you explore this daring and expressive method of painting, wherever you may be.
You’ll find plenty of helpful tips on choosing the right tools and materials, fundamental drawing techniques, developing value and shading, and setting up an effective composition, as well as important information about the influences of perspective, balance, and texture. Detailed examples of animals, people, flowers, and landscapes will help guide you through the most challenging aspects of drawing almost anything, from basic shapes to realistic details.
Some included pencil drawing projects are:
- Strawberries
- Bottle and bread still life
- Flamingo
- Elephant
- Giraffe
- Horse
- Siberian Husky puppy
- English Bulldog
- Clouds
- Desert landscape
- Half Dome, Yosemite
- Woman in profile
- Man in profile
- and many more!
The Collector's Series offers approachable, step-by-step art instruction for a variety of mediums and subjects, such as drawing, oil, acrylic, watercolor, cartooning, calligraphy, and more. Perfect for beginning artists, each title features artist tips for drawing or painting anything and everything from people, animals, and still life to flowers, trees, and landscapes.
Wham! Pow! Bam! Kaboom! Learn everything you need to make your own comic books, superheroes, and story lines with The Art of Comic Book Drawing.
Featuring step-by-step tutorials, helpful tips, and dozens of drawing and illustration techniques, aspiring cartoonists, graphic illustrators, and comic book artists will discover all of the basics, from creating characters to mastering features and expressions to bringing it all together with unique and interesting story lines.
This helpful guide also includes practice pages to help put your newfound skills to immediate use. Learn all the drawing tips and techniques you need to create your very own comic book, including:
- Drawing basics
- Inking techniques
- Creating characters
- Drawing bodies in motion
- Designing characters
- Creating battle scenes
- Adding speech
- Developing a story segment
Veteran comic book artists teach you to draw basic cartoon characters, superheroes, villains, and more using simple, step-by-step drawing lessons. Once you get the hang of illustrating your favorite characters, you’ll learn to draw action scenes, set up panels, add speech bubbles, and even learn the basics of cartoon and comic book word treatments.
With approachable exercises, interactive pages, and action-packed projects to guide you, The Art of Comic Book Drawing will help you find inspiration, learn how to create a story, and most importantly, develop the characters that will make your story come to life. So, grab a pencil and paper, and learn to create your own comic books, step by easy step!
Fashion Design Workshop: Remix is a modern, inclusive, and diverse approach to fashion illustration for up-and-coming designers.
In her long-awaited follow-up to the best-selling Fashion Design Workshop, Stephanie Corfee introduces aspiring illustrators and designers to the art of creative expression and individuality through fashion design. While encouraging freedom of expression, empowerment, strength, diversity, and a modern take on individual style, Stephanie shows you how to work and experiment with a variety of mediums to create fashions that range from classic and conventional to wild and whimsical.
Begin your exploration of fashion illustration by getting acquainted with the art tools and materials you can use, including graphite and colored pencils, markers, pens, watercolor paint and brushes, and mixed-media materials. Then, learn basic figure drawing techniques, consider approaches to inclusive design, and explore your style preferences with a personal style quiz and inspirational examples of different style types.
Put your new knowledge into practice and discover how easy it is to develop eye-catching fashions quickly and easily with step-by-step projects inspired by pop culture and contemporary fashion, including:
- Iconic Designs featuring such notables as Frida Kahlo, Audrey Hepburn, Jay-Z, and Meghan Markle
- Everyday Fashions including rock-n-roll chic, after-hours glamour, and sportswear for yoga, surfing, skiing, and tennis
- Special Occasions such as red carpet glam, prom queen flair, and tuxes both traditional and funky
Pull it all together by creating your own mini collections based on a single word or phrase. At the back, find figure templates for a range of body shapes that can be copied and used again and again.
Filled with creative ideas, inspiration, and a plethora of art tips and techniques, Fashion Design Workshop: Remix will help you take your fashion illustration game to the next level.
Written and illustrated by Kristin Van Leuven, owner of the popular online art shop Hello Lovely People and author of Modern Watercolor (Walter Foster Publishing), Your Year in Art: Watercolor seeks to motivate and inspire. The book is divided into weekly art challenges and prompts that cover appealing themes like florals, birds, and portraits, as well as inspirational ideas for painting patterns, holiday decorations, scenery, and so much more. Lessons and prompts are guided but invite personalization so you can build your skills while celebrating your own unique style.
If you're a beginning artist, you might feel intimidated by watercolor, a medium that doesn't allow for many errors. However, Kristin Van Leuven makes watercolor fun and approachable with her easy-to-follow tips and free-flowing, expressive style. With her guidance, you'll learn to embrace imperfection and use the lessons as inspiration, rather than something to imitate exactly.
With Your Year in Art: Watercolor, develop your own painting style and express yourself using watercolor!
In The Art of Paint Pouring, you learned the basics of creating fluid art—from the essential tools and materials to the most popular techniques. Now with The Art of Paint Pouring: Swipe, Swirl & Spin, you can build on your existing knowledge of paintpouring by learning many new techniques and variations on your favorites to create your own art.
Written and illustrated by Amanda VanEver, author of Walter Foster’s much-anticipated The Art of Paint Pouring, The Art of Paint Pouring: Swipe, Swirl & Spin includes everything you need to take your skills to the next level, whether you are a beginning or an established paint pouring artist. From learning variations on several popular techniques—including flip cup, dip, swirling, spinning, and swiping—as well as more intermediate and advanced pouring techniques, you'll soon be creating colorful, textured fluid art on a variety of surfaces.
Amanda VanEver's YouTube channel, Amanda's Designs, has a huge following of subscribers who watch her weekly videos featuring simple instructions for creating various types of fluid art, from pieces done on canvases and other traditional surfaces, like wood, to objects such as jewelry, bookmarks, coasters, clocks, and vases. With her expertise, you'll learn about:
- The tools and materials needed for paint pouring
- How to mix paint to the right consistency required for pouring
- Tips for creating complementary color palettes
- How to finish a painting so that it lasts
- And much more
Also from the Fluid Art series, refresh your paint-pouring skills and learn new techniques with: The Art of Paint Pouring and The Art of Paint Marbling.
*Named One of the 54 Best Colored Pencil Drawing Books of All Time by BookAuthority*
Modern Colored Pencil delves into all the basic techniques and concepts required to create fresh, colorful works of colored pencil art. Talented artist and author of Your Year in Art and Modern Drawing (both from Walter Foster Publishing) Chelsea Ward takes you on a lively, easy-to-follow exploration of colored pencils in this book. It is packed with creative exercises and projects designed to show you how to work with the versatile, approachable colored pencil medium.
Modern Colored Pencil begins with a brief introduction to various tools, such as pencils (including colored pencils, graphite pencils, and watercolor pencils), papers, and other tools. This handy book also demonstrates often-complicated concepts, such as color mixing, shading, texture, and more, in an easy, approachable manner. Once you have a handle on the basics, explore how to create dynamic color palettes, use basic shapes and techniques to render a range of subjects, and create various marks and textures.
From beautiful florals and nature motifs to animals and everyday items, Modern Colored Pencil provides a fresh, contemporary, and enjoyable approach to learning how to create vivid artwork in colored pencil.
The Modern Series of books offers a fun, contemporary approach to working with traditional art media, demonstrating that with the right type of instruction, encouragement, and tips, drawing and painting success can be achieved by any artist or creative type.
Also in the Modern Series:Modern Acrylic, Modern Drawing, and Modern Watercolor.
Centuries ago, Buddhist monks used black ink and brushes to practice mindfulness and create gorgeously harmonious works of art called "sumi-e paintings." The popularity of sumi-e, or ink wash painting, continues to this day. Mindfulness remains an essential element of sumi-e painting, allowing artists to focus on their surroundings, live in the moment, and feel present—thereby reducing their stress.
Walter Foster’s new Mindful Artist series encourages you to enjoy working in your favorite media to create art from a reflective point of view—an inspiring, relaxing experience that emphasizes the creative process, rather than the end result. These books are designed to help you move past creative obstacles, like a perfectionist attitude toward making art or self-defeating concerns about your personal talent and abilities. These guides will not only help you stay mindful throughout the process, but also to find personal meaning in the artwork you create. Mindful Artist: Birds & Botanicals publishes in November 2021.
Mindful Artist: Sumi-e Painting opens with an introduction explaining the links between mindfulness and sumi-e and how they enhance one another. Sections on “The Four Treasures,” as the tools needed for sumi-e painting are called; brushstrokes and painting techniques; and “The Four Gentlemen,” or the most common subjects in sumi-e painting, ensure that you have a solid background before getting started on the simple, approachable step-by-step painting projects. Throughout the book you can find stunning full-page artwork, tips for remaining mindful while you work, creative prompts and exercises, inspirational ideas, and suggestions on how to add color to black ink pieces.
Learn to practice mindfulness while you master the popular art of ink wash painting with this inspiring and supportive guide.
With Colorways: Watercolor Animals, learn to paint all your favorite animals, from an elephant and a whale to a dog, cat, fish, and more. Each step-by-step demonstration shows not only how to capture the animal’s likeness, but also how to use color to create magical, otherworldly, and whimsical paintings.
In these tutorials, you will also learn how to use watercolor paint to suggest texture and fur on your animal subjects. Along the way, you will find technique instruction and tips for using different types of strokes, working with various brush shapes and sizes and using washes and underpaintings. Geared toward advanced beginners and more experienced watercolorists looking to play with color, this book offers fun subject matter and eye candy for all art lovers.
The Colorways series teaches artists how to employ color across a variety of media in unique and imaginary ways to create innovative and inspired artwork. Focusing less on realistic artistic representations and more on creating expressive art, this series invites you to break the standard rules of color and let your imagination and artwork soar to new heights in order to create unconventional, whimsical, and fanciful works of art.
Learn the customary rules of color, and then bypass them, with the help of Colorways: Watercolor Animals, a book that encourages you to use color for personal expression while painting your favorite animals.