Girl With A Pearl Earring - by Johannes Vermeer, 1632 - 1675 LARGE Sketchbook 8.5x11" - 21.59x27.94cm 100 Blank pages Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life. He is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. This cool elegant sketchbook has 100 pages and a convenient 8.5x11" size. Show your love for art. The perfect Johannes Vermeer gift for artists, designers, illustrators, art teachers and students. Great gift for women and men who love Vermeer Van Delft paintings and drawings. It makes a great Christmas or Birthday gift for girlfriend and boyfriend.

Art historians have long speculated on how Vermeer achieved the uncanny mixture of detached precision, compositional repose, and perspective accuracy that have drawn many to describe his work as "photographic." Indeed, many wonder if Vermeer employed a camera obscura, a primitive form of camera, to enhance his realistic effects? In Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman traces the development of the camera obscura--first described by Leonaro da Vinci--weighs the arguments that scholars have made for and against Vermeer's use of the camera, and offers a fascinating examination of the paintings themselves and what they alone can tell us of Vermeer's technique. Vermeer left no record of his method and indeed we know almost nothing of the man nor of how he worked. But by a close and illuminating study of the paintings Steadman concludes that Vermeer did use the camera obscura and shows how the inherent defects in this primitive device enabled Vermeer to achieve some remarkable effects--the slight blurring of image, the absence of sharp lines, the peculiar illusion not of closeness but of distance in the domestic scenes. Steadman argues that the use of the camera also explains some previously unexplainable qualities of Vermeer's art, such as the absence of conventional drawing, the pattern of underpainting in areas of pure tone, the pervasive feeling of reticence that suffuses his canvases, and the almost magical sense that Vermeer is painting not objects but light itself. Drawing on a wealth of Vermeer research and displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtleties of the work itself, Philip Steadman offers in Vermeer's Camera a fresh perspective on some of the most enchanting paintings ever created.

An eminent historian of cartography offers this Iavishly illustrated account of the mapmaking revolution in Renaissance Europe. 78 halftones. 12 color plates.

Always wanted to learn how to draw? Now’s your chance. Kean University Teacher of the Year Robin Landa has cleverly disguised an entire college-level course on drawing in this fun, hands-on, begging-to-be-drawn-in sketchbook. Even if you’re one of the four people on this planet who have never picked up a pencil before, you will learn how to transform your doodles into realistic drawings that actually resemble what you’re picturing in your head. In this book, you will learn how to use all of the formal elements of drawing–line, shape, value, color, pattern, and texture–to create well-composed still lifes, landscapes, human figures, and faces. Keep your pencils handy while you’re reading because you’re going to get plenty of drawing breaks– and you can do most of them right in the book while the techniques are fresh in your mind. To keep you inspired, Landa breaks up the step-by-step instruction with drawing suggestions and examples from a host of creative contributors including designers Stefan G. Bucher and Jennifer Sterling, artist Greg Leshé, illustrator Mary Ann Smith, animator Hsinping Pan, and more.

Contains seven essays. Three of them use only pictures. Examines the relationship between what we see and what we know.

Historians and art historians provide a critique of existing methodologies and an interdisciplinary inquiry into seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture.

The seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza-also known as Benedict or Bento de Spinoza-spent the most intense years of his short life writing. He also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends rescued letters, manuscripts, notes-but no drawings. For years, without knowing what its pages might hold, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook, wanting to see the drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a friend gave him a beautiful virgin sketchbook, Berger said, "This is Bento's!" and he began to draw, taking his inspiration from the philosopher's vision. In this illustrated color book John Berger uses the imaginative space he creates to explore the process of drawing, politics, storytelling and Spinoza's life and times.