Painting-the

This book was my salvation. Within these pages you'll find instructions on how to draw all kinds of creatures, from the lowly ant to an elaborate dragon, all by adding easy shapes (traingles, circles, linnes) one-at-a-time.

There is considerable truth in this book (and the author's others, which I unfortunately didn't discover until recently). How simplicity can communicate. How you can tackle something big by working in small steps. How you can make something you imagine come to like.

To this day I can take pleasure in drawing pictures, even though they're simple and I've never taken an art class since first grade, and I attribute a lot of that joy to this book. And nothing compares to giving a frustrated five-year-old an Emberly book and watching his face light up as he realizes that maybe he can make his drawings more than just scribbles.

This book (and the others) cannot be recommend too highly.

The story concerns a spider named Sophie. Sophie doesn't just spin a web--she weaves extraordinary works of art. Everyone who knows her is in awe of her talents.

She strikes off on her own to a drab little boarding house where she takes up residence and weaves her wonderful webs--but none of the people there care for her webs--or for her, for that matter. Except for a boarder who is expecting a child. She welcomes Sophie into her room and as she knits clothes for the baby Sophie, now old and frail, weaves a special baby gift of her own.

Warm and touching without being maudlin, Sophie's Masterpiece is a kind and loving story with extraordinary illustrations the dazzle on their own yet blend perfectly with the tale.

I have given this book as a gift to many children and am told time after time that it soon ranks as those kids favorite book.

Sophie's Masterpiece is a masterpiece, indeed!

The illustrations are nice, even if the spider is a little silly with her 8 multi-color socks. The picture of the mother with her baby in a bassinet by her bed is sweet, as the mother sleeps with her hand on her baby. I can only imagine that soon the little one will be snuggled in bed with her mama and they will both be wrapped in the blanket made by the caring spider.

The real treat is that the pages contain an incredible amount of intensely interesting background information (and tons of photos!) on Alex's early works, as well as insightful commentaries by Albert Hoffmann, Stephen Larsen, Donald Kuspit, and Ken Wilber.

I have to say... I bought my copy at a higher price directly from Alex Grey's website (...). It showed up a few days after ordering, smelling of freshly printed ink, nicely wrapped and (best of all!) signed by Alex Grey.

While it is true that Alex Grey's most recent book celebrates the Journey within all of us, it also offers the reader the opportunity to be subtly transformed by the power of the imagery and lyrical writing contained within - something that we can all benefit from during these disturbing days and into the uncertain ones to come.

For this reader, the most exciting aspect of this book is the announcement of Alex Grey's plan to build a Chapel to house the Sacred Mirrors.

I have no doubt that this Chapel will be one of the wonders of our age.

May God Bless Alex, Allyson, and Zena Grey and give them all the strength, luck, and power to support each other into the distant years to come.

- G.F.

Alex Gray is a remarkable artist who has survived the different phases artists move through in their lifetimes, and has found himself a style and expression that is both moving and beautiful to experience. From his early works as a teenager, to his performance art of the 70's and 80's, Mr. Grey has translated many of his emotional experiences to various artistic mediums. The pictures and history provide you with the background you need to understand the spiritual inspiration Mr. Grey has finally found in his work and presented in this book.

I found this book to be very inspirational. The artwork is a personal and moving experience of the artist and I was very much taken by the meanings and visual ideals conveyed by them.

Bravo for a well produced effort on the part of the publisher, Inner Traditions, to be able to produce a book worthy of the works of this artist.

Spiritually inspired, expertly rendered and well produced, this book is worthy of a place on any serious collectors shelf.

Mark Ryden's work has appeared on the covers of Communication Arts, Juxtapoz art magazine and Rolling Stone. His art is currently on display at the Earl McGrath Gallery in NYC. ...

Mark Ryden is definitely a master artist for our age. His paintings are intricate and surreal, seeming to pull the dreamworld into the real world and representing it in such a way that is both charming and inexplicably bizarre. It is like stepping from the innocence of your childhood and finding yourself in an imaginary land where cute bunnies butcher meat and angelic children with luminous eyes hold the hand of a miniature Abe Lincoln and seem to say "this is normal".

...

This title is separated onto two videos, part 1 about 1 hour 15 min, part 2 about 1 hour. (I couldn't get an exact time count for tape 2. It varied every time I timed it. Maybe the tape material was stretching?)

It begins with a brief bio of his training and awards, showing several of his painings in the background.

Then, a brief intro to some basic techniques, flat wash, graded wash, wet in wet, but nothing else.

Then he begins to demonstrate his painting, a foggy landscape, mostly done wet in wet.

The value of these videos is to see his demonstration of him actually painting. You see every stroke, which is very good for learning. Camera angles and audio are excellent.

But he doesn't teach design, composition, value sketch, color mixing theory, etc. If you want to learn these basics of painting you are better off with Tony Couch or Tom Lynch videos. But it is valuable to see Paul do his demo because he talks about his thinking process as he paints. It is always valuable to see how a painter thinks about his painting, his process, rather than just staying with cold techniques. These videos are excellent for that.

He points out how the water & paint behaves, how he corrects or covers up mistakes, how he layers paint to get rich values, how he choses colors he is using, how he changes his designing, etc. Its amazing how he gets his effects with his huge brushes and lots of water.

He usually names the colors he uses, mostly Winsor & Newton. But as he doesn't talk about color mixing theory, or quality of paints, he doesn't talk about permanant or fugitive clolors. At one point he mentions he is now using a *permanant* Alizarin Crimson, a historically fugitive color. (Genuine Alizarin is fugitive, which means it will fade or change over time with sunlight shining on it, and you shouldn't use it since there are permanant substitute paints for this color. *Premanant* Alizarin is most likely made up from these permanant substitue paints, but companies preserve the old name so thay can make money.) But then he uses *huge* amounts of Winsor Violet, which I belive is made of of Dioxazine, which is a fugitve color! (I hope I'm correct in this and not making a fool of myself. If I am, I appologize in advance.) According to Michael Wilcox's book, "The Wilcox Guide to the Best Watercolor Paints", he states that Dioxazine is a fugitive color. So why 1) does Mr Jackson use it if he switched to a *Permanant* Alizarin, and 2) why does Winsor & Newton continue to put out fugitve colors for sale at all???? (Read Wilcox's books to learn how to mix violets and purples using permanant colors as well as find out which paints are fugitive and which are permanant.)

While it is wonderful to see Mr. Jackson demo his painting, the whole video is *continually* broken up everytime he needs a break to dry his paper with *numerous* silly interviews of clients and samples of his paintings. These breaks happen at different times, after 5min, 12min, 17min, 24min, etc.

Showing samples of his beautiful paintings at these breaks is acceptable, although time consuming if you want to keep the actual demo on *one* VHS tape. You can go to his web site to see all his paintings. But the interviews are totally frustrating.

The interviews are of some of his clients/patrons: eg. Gov of Missouri, his 1st Lady, and several Doctors. These are more like infomercials. All they say is how wonderful Paul Jackson is, how much they like and are amazed by his art work, how his art is so detailed "it looks like photographs", how he paints upside down even though "that's impossible, but he does it!", etc. These "infomercial" commentaries are TOTALLY USELESS!!! They take up valuable video time and waste the viewer's time. These are all distinguised people, clients, patrons, nice people who really appreciate his work, but with all due respect, who cares about their comments! They are not artists. I bought the video to see Paul paint, not hear non artists babble on and on singing his praises and their amazments! I already know how wonderful he is and am amazed by his art myself, otherwise I wouldn't have bought the video and his book! I don't need nor want their comments. Its a total waste!

These breaks are short, 30 sec to 1 min each, but are so numerous, between 20-30 of them or more, they break up the flow of the video. I tried to time them to see how much time they took. Between the two videos, the infomercial interviews totalled to about 8 min, and the gallery of his paintings totalled to about 8-10min. Not much time total, but because there are so many of them, they are very frustrating and intrusive.

If the tapes had totally eliminated these useless interviews/comments and edited down the samples of his gallery of paintings, he could have fitted his *actual demo* onto a single 2 hour tape. Why, we need to ask, was it spread out onto 2 tapes with so much filler?

I rated the video with 4 stars instead of 5 because of these useless interviews. I would recommend this set of videos to actually see him paint. You just need to ignor the interviews. You can learn a lot just from observation and hearing *HIS* comments! If you get his book, you will get more step by step instructions.

If he ever does another video, which I would love to see of his tighter style, I would recommend: 1) DROP THE USELESS INFOMERCIAL INTERVIEWS! LET YOUR ART SPEAK FOR ITSELF. LET YOUR PAINTING DEMO SPEAK FOR ITSELF. and 2)show more of your planning, design stage. This is just as important as seeing you actually paint.

Though Harley Brown works mostly in pastel, the book doesn't dwell on specific pastel techniques, instead it addresses major issues of design, color, composition and lots of other wonderful "eternal truths"--Actually, I wouldn't call them eternal truths, just the "doink" I knew that, why don't I take that into consideration when I paint! I work in watercolor and find what I've been reading to be invaluable. The section on color alone is worth the purchase.

If you are just beginning, some of the content may not be of value, as beginners are just learning to be comfortable with their mediums. I wouldn't get this book if you're looking for specific art techniques. This isn't a painting 101 type book, its more a graduate level type course. Don't get me wrong, even beginners could learn from it, it has been designed so well. But if you are an intermediate painter, or even an advanced painter, looking to rethink your methods of creativity and trying to push yourself to the next level of creativity--this really is the book for you.

The writing style is refreshing, with two different colors of text, the black being the formal, complete sentence descriptions, the red is the humorous and short--but meaningful re-interpretation. Then there are little tiny footnotes at the bottom with very personal asides and running up the sides of the page, in the margin, inspirational quotes. Its pretty neat, definately something to read over and over again, and in short, about the best "art how to book" I've read. Its almost like being in the same classroom with the authors.

Ignore the guy from Oceanside, CA. Obviously, he does not understand the concept of a book of Illustrations (more pictures, less content).