Liberate Your Creativity with Acrylic Paints! Acrylic Revolution is your essential, all-in-one guide for acrylic painting techniques and more. It features over 101 ways to break through the boundaries of conventional painting and re-define the creative potential of this all-purpose medium. Every page provides insight on how to use acrylic paint in ways you never thought possible to create stunning visual effects and textures. Ten complete sections detail a range of empowering applications, including how to: • Prepare and paint on virtually any surface • Create textures of all kinds • Work with transfers, collage, resists and mixed media • Achieve innovative stenciling and line work • Customize your paint to adjust thickness, transparency and drying time • Simulate other mediums, such as oil, tempera or watercolor • Create faux finishes, magical effects, sheens and more To give you additional insight and inspiration, this book features a gallery of finished works by fellow painting revolutionaries that blend various acrylic techniques to create amazing effects. You'll also find practical advice that covers the basics and beyond—from selecting materials and cleaning your brushes to finishing and preserving your artwork. There's even a complete glossary of terms for fast and easy referencing. Pick up a brush and start your own acrylic revolution today! Use the techniques in this book to free your creative spirit and create the paintings you've always dreamed of.

Acrylic is often used as a substitute for oil paint or watercolor, but the real gold mine is in allowing the medium freedom to do what it does best. This book shows how today’s artists are doing exactly that. It’s loaded with original artwork and valuable insight from 64 artists, incredibly diverse in styles and subjects, each using acrylic in unique ways to create expressive and personal art. • 64 artists offer their individual ideas, approaches and inspirations for working with acrylic paints • 29 styles, ranging from photorealism to minimal color field and everything in between, are explored through artist profiles, artwork and boundary-breaking “challenges” that provide dynamic starting points for your own art • 29 step-by-step demonstrations illustrate acrylic-driven techniques you can take straight to your work, including collage and assemblage, reverse painting, printmaking, accidental stenciling, working with metallic mixtures and more A follow-up to the best-selling Acrylic Revolution,Acrylic Innovation takes you outside your comfort zone. Dip in whenever you feel the urge to experiment, have fun and see fresh and exciting results.

With page after page of stimulating possibilities, this book guides you on an uncompromising journey to visually dynamic, conceptually provocative, utterly original art. Embrace the spirit of creative play, break out of your comfort zone, and take your art to a whole new level. In her follow-up to the popular Art Revolution, Lisa L. Cyr delves deeper into an inspiring range of two and three-dimensional mixed-media techniques. Discover fresh, alternative ways to apply and manipulate painting media, transform surfaces, and create distinctive, message-driven work. Inside you'll find: • A wide array of unconventional tools, materials and processes that help artists blaze their own unique and creative paths • 12 step-by-step demonstrations highlighting specific experimental techniques, including freeform painting, making custom tools, and building dimension into a surface with inlaid boxes • 3 feature demonstrations showing mixed-media processes at play in the creation of original artworks, from concept to completion • A chapter on creative self-promotion revealing the latest marketing and presentation strategies for the working artist

The Art of Theatrical Design: Elements of Visual Composition, Methods, and Practice addresses the core principles that develop the student designer into a true artist, providing a foundation that ensures success with each production design. This text concentrates on the skills necessary to create effective, evocative, and engaging theatrical designs that support the play contextually, thematically, and visually. It gives students the grounding in core design principles they need to approach design challenges and make design decisions in both assigned class projects and realized productions. This book features: In-depth discussions of design elements and principles for costume, set, lighting, sound, and projection designs Coverage of key concepts such as content, context, genre, style, play structure and format, and the demands and limitations of various theatrical spaces Essential principles, including collaboration, inspiration, conceptualization, script analysis, conducting effective research, building a visual library, developing an individual design process, and the role of the critique in collaboration Information on recent digital drawing tool technology, such as the Wacom® Inkling pen, Wacom® Intuos digitizing tablets and digital sketching, and rendering programs such as Autodesk® Sketchbook Pro and Adobe® Photoshop® Chapter exercises and key terms designed to provide an engaging experience with the material and to facilitate student understanding

50 dazzling techniques...for work that shines above the rest! From the author of the best-selling books Acrylic Revolution and Acrylic Innovation, this book blazes new creative territory with 50 techniques that harness the artistic power of light. Ranging from subtle glazing on metal leaf, to pearly sheens, to boldly colored optical effects and glossy surfboard finishes, these approaches represent the most requested aspects of Nancy Reyner's popular workshops. • 50 eye-catching techniques feature metal leaf, reflective paints, pouring, fluorescent and phosphorescent paints, refractive layering and optical color effects. • Possibilities are vividly illustrated with diverse work from 44 artists. • A "Crash Course on Acrylic" chapter offers an overview of how to use these versatile paints and products to their fullest potential. This hands-on guide provides clear step-by-step directions to successfully execute these new and exciting techniques. Explore matte skin construction, sheen shifting, embedding objects, patinas and polished stone effects. Use these approaches for organic, abstract or realistic styles...as backgrounds, top layers, or accents layered in between...combine, experiment, and let your paintings shine.

Open the door to your creative awakening! "Do everything with great love, whether it is painting, writing, dancing, relationships or learning." --Sandra Duran Wilson Sharing your passion is the greatest gift you can give, and the journey to your creative awakening starts with a single step--or a single exercise. You never know what will open the door. This book is for curious souls wanting to find the right spark to jump-start their creativity. Inside, there are 52 chapters with an exercise for each week of the year featuring a step-by-step art, writing or meditation project. Following the flow of the seasons, the exercises are designed to take you from the spring of your intuition, through the summer of personal growth, fall of self-discovery to arrive at the end of your creative cycle refreshed, revived and renewed. Find your voice and vision: • 52 fun and beautiful projects offer a new chance at self-discovery every week for one year--they are not necessarily sequential and can be completed at any time on your journey • Weekly prompts merge art making with universal life challenges to help you open your mind and explore different spiritual and creative philosophies Refill your well, become the light, expand yourself and your story.

Pulsing with ideas, energy and inspiration, Sketchbook Confidential offers a rare peek inside the personal sketchbooks of 40+ master artists. From colorful painted sketches to spontaneous napkin doodles, from the intensely personal to the purely whimsical, most of the work here was produced quickly and never intended for public view. It is honest and immediate, fresh and fearless. In their own words, the artists share the intentions and inspirations behind their sketching. For some, it is a cherished, everyday habit—a way of wandering through the ideas in their mind, playing around with new subjects, or just having some anything-goes kind of fun. For others, sketching is a deliberate tool for problem-solving—working through a composition, capturing a moment's light or test-driving a color scheme. As you turn the pages you'll be immersed in the creative processes of these individuals, arriving on the other side with a feeling of kinship and a renewed desire to boldly capture life in your own sketchbooks!