Daring and provocative, these images of the female nude challenge the viewer to defy limits and enter "forbidden territory." Argentini plays with our notions of privacy and constructs a hidden erotic universe where it is hard to know what we will find—our deepest erotic fantasies or a parallel reality? These charged erotic images are both sophisticated and raw, with a dark glamour all their own.

A Letter from co-Author Corky Binggeli Interior Design Illustrated 3rd Edition When I was asked to work with Francis D.K. Ching on the second edition of Interior Design Illustrated, I was a bit intimidated, as I had used his books in my own architectural and interior design education and admired his beautiful illustrations. Now that we have again collaborated on the third edition, I am delighted to be part of this creative team, and I can see how my... more...

Introducing a standard 12-colour palette, the author shows how to select and mix 132 new colours, using at-a-glance mixing charts. Once the theory and practical skills behind mixing have been understood, the reader can explore the range of palettes suggested here for painting particular subjects.

The Art of Urban Sketching is both a comprehensive guide and a showcase of location drawings by artists around the world who draw the cities where they live and travel. Authored by the founder of the nonprofit organization Urban Sketchers (www.urbansketchers.org), this beautiful, 320-page volume explains urban sketching within the context of a long historical tradition and how it is being practiced today. With profiles of leading practitioners and... more...

This book explores the nature of one of the most ancient tools for nonverbal communication: drawings. They are naturally adaptable enough to meet an incredibly wide range of communication needs. But how exactly do they do their job so well? Avoiding the kinds of aesthetic rankings of different graphic domains so often made by art historians and critics, Manfredo Massironi considers an extensive and representative sample of graphic applications with an... more...

Aesthetics and Painting introduces and opens up current debates and ideas in the aesthetics of painting. At the book's center is an investigation of the complex relationship between what a painting depicts and the means by which it is depicted. The book looks at: how and why painting may be distinguished from other art forms; the relationship between the painted surface and the depicted subject; the "rules of representation" specific to... more...

Traditional Japanese design imbues objects with a sense of history and artistry that easily reaches across cultural boundaries. In Things Japanese: Everyday Objects of Extraordinary Beauty and Significance, author Nicholas Bornoff and photographer Michael Freeman examine over 60 traditional objects that are uniquely Japanese, deftly illustrating their beauty and significance. Beautifully crafted samurai swords Elegant wooden tansu chests... more...

Materials are like words. The richer your design vocabulary, the more distinctive the design solutions you can express. Sketching ideas with a pencil or rendering them with computer software are useful experiences, but there is no substitute for confronting physical forms and materials directly. Exploring Materials is an action-oriented, accessible guide to design thinking that addresses both the "how" and "why" of product design. In place of the... more...

Destined to go down as one of the era's most astonishing global art projects, the Brooklyn Art Library's Sketchbook Project has, in less than a decade, amassed more than thirty thousand sketchbooks submitted by people of all ages and artistic abilities from more than 130 countries. Bursting with color, vivid imagery, and bouts of whimsy mixed with deeply intimate insights, the sketchbooks capture the texture of personal experience in a dizzying variety... more...

From Siri Hustvedt, author of the bestselling novel What I Loved, comes this inspired collection of essays on painting. Here, Hustvedt concentrates her narrative gifts on the works of such masters as Francisco de Goya, Jan Vermeer, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Gerhard Richter, and Joan Mitchell. Hustvedt is concerned with the very act of looking and the limitless rewards to be gleaned from sustained, careful attention. Unlike film and books,... more...