From the artist behind the popular Pigeon Letters website, an easy, no-skills-necessary guide to drawing flowers, leaves, and cacti with 200 step-by-step prompts. Line drawing is an easy-to-master art form featuring illustrative, doodle-like designs. It's used widely among artists of many types with both fine and bold lines, creating different variations. Botanical Line Drawing teaches you how to start with the simplest doodles, building into more elaborate, delicate illustrations. This book focuses on the extremely popular subject matter of the natural world and includes flowers, leaves, succulents, houseplants, trees, branches, mushrooms, and more. These simple line drawings will allow you to branch out and have fun with your own personal style, as well as inspire you to add flourishes to other projects.

Picasso may have the most uncanny line since Botticelli. Each medium or style he chose to master, no matter how solid or sculptural, can be seen as line disguised, metamorphic; as the labyrinth to which a single thread is the key. Theoretically, line is infinite; Picasso in his fertility nearly realized that theory in almost a century of ceaseless drawing, whether on paper, zinc, stone, or other media. Here is a sampling, rather than a comprehensive selection, from that plenitude; while nothing could be comprehensive within a single volume, the genius of Picasso's line manifests itself so clearly that this culling from various periods reveals the line in most of its guises. Beginning with a 1905 circus family in drypoint, 44 drawings cover Picasso's major themes, techniques, and styles. From the almost classic Ingresque clarity of the Diaghilev and Stravinsky portraits (1919, 1920) via cubist studies and "neo-classical" nudes, Picasso's restless hand remakes his world again and again with fresh energy, culminating here in six sketches of the artist/model dashed out in raging love/hate in the midst of personal crisis (1953–54). In between are times of serenity and introspection (Seven Dancers (1919), with the future Olga Picasso up front; many figures and bathers) and, particularity as book illustrations, many mythological studies; Eurydice Stung by a Serpent (1930 etching), Dying Minotaur in the Arena (1933), an etching for a 1934 edition of Lysistrata. Balzac is represented by a striking lithographic portrait (1952) and by etching for Vollard's edition of Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu. The sudden appearance of an earthy, hirsute Rembrandt (1934) seems to confirm Picasso's membership in the select group of art history's greatest draughtsmen.

Everything you need to master the art of line drawing, whether the goal is to draw for fun or illustrate an original masterpiece! Line drawing involves using a combination of fine lines and bold strokes to create artwork of any kind—from basic folk art to more sophisticated illustrations. This form of art requires minimal tools, making it both affordable and portable. In Art Starts with a Line, artists of all skill levels are invited to learn how to draw almost anything starting with simple lines and basic shapes. Following a brief introduction to tools and materials, as well as some easy exercises and techniques for warming up to basic drawing tools, you will explore a variety of subjects. You’ll draw plants and flowers, architecture and cityscapes, animals, and everything in between. These projects aren’t restricted to black and white either! You’ll find techniques for adding color with colored pencil, marker, pen, even digitally. Art Starts with a Line presents everything you’ll need to know to learn how to successfully create line drawings of all types. Whether your goal is to create a custom logo for a client, or to simply decorate your planner—it’s all here. Packed with engaging instruction, tips, and beautiful step-by-step artwork, this approachable, inspiring guide to line drawing shows beginning artists how to create meaningful artwork using simple lines and mindful prompts.

PEN AND INK DRAWING WORKBOOK is perfect for anyone looking for a book that provides lots of practice for developing and refining ink drawing skills and technique. It is appropriate for learners on all levels and is filled with over 100 engaging drills and exercises. The exercises in this comprehensive workbook are thoughtfully designed to take you from the essential elements like pen control, line consistency, basic strokes and variations to more advanced concepts such as, blending values, controlling gradations, shading compound forms, and rendering textures. It covers all the major pen and ink shading techniques including cross-hatching, stippling, scribbling, and more. In addition, there are 30 inspiring drawing exercises on a variety of subjects, which allows you to draw right inside the book. This book is the complementary workbook for PEN AND INK DRAWING: A SIMPLE GUIDE. However, it can still be used on its own as a general workbook for refining your skills and helping you to create stunning ink drawings with confidence!

From distinctive portraits and complex photographic tableaux to YouTube sensations, the work of prominent African photographer Roger Ballen is given a fresh perspective in this volume. For nearly half a century Roger Ballen has been shooting black-and-white film--a member of the last generation to work in that medium. He started his career taking portraits of rural Afrikaaners in their homes and has lately been moving toward more staged sets, and embellishing his photographs with expressionistic graffiti-type drawings. This retrospective book follows the development of line and drawing in Ballen's body of work, which is often characterized by complex interior arrangements of people, animals, and furnishings. In more recent work the artist has come out from behind the camera lens to engage with line more directly--including a luminous series of photographs that began with drawing on glass. Psychologically edgy and seductively beautiful images result. This volume also addresses the use of drawing and line in Ballen's newest work in videography. This astonishing collection reveals the breadth of Ballen's work, which moves fluidly between photography and drawing, harshness and beauty, raw expression and technical prowess.