Printmaking

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A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year.

BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table.

PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy.

THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

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Aspiring artists, illustrators, art students, and art hobbyists will discover how to use basic carving tools and techniques to design and create custom lino prints for distinctive works of art. Practical instruction combined with approachable step-by-step projects and inspirational imagery guide readers on an engaging, easy-to-follow exploration of block printing.

Following an introduction to essential materials, such as printmaking inks, linoleum blocks, carving tools, and papers, Block Print for Beginners demonstrates how to get from uncarved block to finished print, including transferring a drawing, carving the block, working with inks, and achieving the best print results. Once comfortable with the basics, aspiring printmakers can move on to explore a series of step-by-step tutorials for creating a variety of lino prints with blocks they can use over and over again.

From basic block prints to more advanced techniques, such as printing in repeated patterns and creating stationery, wrapping paper, wallpaper, and more, Block Print for Beginners provides a fresh, contemporary, and enjoyable approach to learning this time-treasured art form.

The Inspired Artist series invites art hobbyists and casual art enthusiasts to have fun learning basic art concepts, relaxing into the creative process to make art in a playful, contemporary style. Also from the series, find even more artistic inspiration with: Draw Every Little Thing, Paint Every Little Thing, and Watercolor Painting at Home.

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Author Sarah J. Gardner has made it her mission to help others find their creativity and inspiration through mixed-media art. In Share Your Joy, she offers her idea for how to share joy via handmade postcards, note cards, and other items that can be mailed to anyone around the world and put a smile on their face. That’s where Sarah gets her joy, and with the techniques and step-by-step projects in this book, she will help you find it too.

Working on papers you have painted and that can be drawn and painted over (what Sarah calls “art papers”), you will learn to use collage, stenciling, found objects, watercolor and acrylic paints, and more to create art to share with others.

Included in the book are:
 

• Step-by-step projects for making shareable art
• Interviews with “art swappers” who’ve sent and received art for years
• Inspirational prompts, quotes, and affirmations to keep your creativity levels up
• Suggestions for how to make inspirational journals and sketchbooks to work inside

Experience the fun and happiness of making shareable, mixed-media art with Share Your Joy!

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BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table.

PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy.

THE ARTIST. Angela Harding is a fine art painter and illustrator based in Rutland, UK. She specialises in lino prints and her work is inspired by British birds and the countryside.

THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

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Nick Morley is a seasoned expert at guiding aspiring printmakers through their first projects, and this accessible book distils his knowledge into friendly step-by-step projects, each chosen to demonstrate a particular skill, and illustrated with clear photography.

With templates accompanying each project making it easy to get started, the reader will quickly find themselves growing in confidence and skill.

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The National Book Award Finalist is now a major motion picture directed by Marjane Sartrapi, starring Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley.

“Vivid and ethereal.”—The New York Times

“Radioactive is quite unlike any book I have ever read—part history, part love story, part art work and all parts sheer imaginative genius.”—Malcolm Gladwell

A visual journey into the life of Marie Curie, as told through the dazzling collage style of acclaimed author and artist Lauren Redniss.

Radioactive is the mesmerizing, landmark illustrated biography of Marie Curie, by acclaimed author and artist Lauren Redniss. Through brilliant visual storytelling, Redniss walks us through Curie’s life, which was marked by extraordinary scientific discovery and dramatic personal trauma—from her complex working and romantic relationship with Pierre Curie, to their discovery of two new scientific elements, to Pierre’s tragic death, to Marie’s two Nobel Prizes. A haunting and wondrous portrait of one of history’s most intriguing figures, Radioactive combines archival photos, images, and clippings with dazzling line drawings and a compelling narrative to tell Curie’s story. Far more than an art book or a graphic novel, Radioactive is a stunning visual biography and a true work of art.

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From Edouard Manet’s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh’s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe―but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.

The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art―including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air”―were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century.

This volume, derived from the original XXL monograph, lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.

From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print―beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions―alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans―rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living―stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship.

As part of our 40th anniversary series, this edition compiles the finest extant impressions from museums and private collections across the globe in a lightweight, accessible format, offering extensive descriptions to guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.

About the series

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program―now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

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Hokusai (1760–1849) was an extraordinarily prolific Japanese master artist and printmaker of the ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’) genre. More than 150 years after his death, his legacy remains as important as any Western painter’s. His work inspired a roll-call of great artists including Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Gauguin, Manet, Degas and Klimt as well as craftsmen and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright.

This book features six meticulously crafted pop-ups of some of his most famous works: ‘The Great Wave’; ‘Chrysanthemums and Horsefly’; ‘The Poem of Ariwara no Narihira or Autumn Leaves’; ‘Kirituri Waterfall’; ‘Phoenix’; and ‘A Sudden Gust of Wind’.

Table of Contents

Introduction • Six Pop-Ups: The Great Wave Chrysanthemums Bridge • Waterfall • Phoenix (gatefold pop-up) • Sudden Gust of Wind

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Meet the artist whose majestic breaking wave sent ripples across the world. Hokusai (1760–1849) is not only one of the giants of Japanese art and a legend of the Edo period, but also a founding father of Western modernism, whose prolific gamut of prints, illustrations, paintings, and beyond forms one of the most comprehensive oeuvres of ukiyo-e art and a benchmark of japonisme. His influence spread through Impressionism, Art Nouveau, and beyond, enrapturing the likes of Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Vincent van Gogh.

Hokusai was always a man on the move. He changed domicile more than 90 times during his lifetime and changed his own name through over 30 pseudonyms. In his art, he adopted the same restlessness, covering the complete spectrum of Japanese ukiyo-e,“pictures of the floating world”, from single-sheet prints of landscapes and actors to erotic books. In addition, he created album prints, illustrations for verse anthologies and historical novels, and surimono, which were privately issued prints for special occasions.

Hokusai’s print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, published between c. 1830 and 1834 is the artist’s most renowned work and, with its soaring peak through different seasons and from different vantage points, marked the towering summit of the Japanese landscape print. The series’ Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known simply as The Great Wave, is one of the most recognized images of Japanese art in the world.

This TASCHEN introduction spans the length and breadth of Hokusai’s career with key pieces from his far-reaching portfolio. Through these meticulous, majestic works and series, we trace the variety of Hokusai’s subjects, from erotic books to historical novels, and the evolution of his vivid formalism and decisive delineation of space through color and line that would go on to liberate Western art from the constraints of its one-point perspective and unleash the modernist momentum.

About the series

Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Art series features:

a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance

a concise biography

approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

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