Product Description

From finding inspiration to capturing diaphanous detail, a step-by-step guide to fairy-painting techniques. Drawing and painting fairies is a delightful and eternally popular art form that poses its own unique challenges: how do you paint an imaginary subject? How can you capture the luminosity and tiny detail of a figure that might fit in the palm of your hand? This book explains the techniques to bring your fairy art to life. It supplies the know-how and the skills in the form of practical techniques, linework to trace, and constructional drawings that clearly demonstrate how to form heads, faces, and figures that are easy to copy. For the beginner artist there's linework to copy and trace, and then colour using whatever technique appeals. Easy-to-follow constructional drawings reveal how to simplify shapes and figures to create flower fairies, nymphs, and sprites; trace a basic form, then complete your fairy however you wish. Learn how to capture the grace and movement of fairy gestures; use stippling and impressing to add texture to fabric and wings; learn how to lay variegated washes and reserve highlights.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28606 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

About the Author
Hazel Harrison is a practising artist who works in all painting media, often using her own photographs as a source of reference. She studied painting at the Guildford School of Art and the Royal Academy of Painting in London. Hazel lives in a small village in the Peak District, and divides her time between painting and writing art instruction books. Linda Ravenscroft is an artist of international standing, whose beautifully detailed fairy and fantasy images can be seen all over the world, from fine art prints to exclusive giftware and fantasy art books. Linda became a professional fantasy artist in 1996, and since then her work has been in demand, with many of her pieces now with American collectors.

Customer Reviews

A Real How To Do!
This is an excellent book, both in concept and execution.I bought it a couple of weeks ago and its already been used to produce pictures!
The "Getting Started" section covers equipment and media,use of colour and much more...even experienced artists can gain something from these pages.
The second section is devoted to drawing the specific subjects of the book...fairies, and includes how to draw faces, hands, wings etc with proportion and classic poses also covered...as well as fairy fashion and habitats.
Swipe files are included so the aspiring artist,from beginner to more advanced,can copy relevent bits to create their own fairy.
The Techniques section takes a step by step approach to producing a variety of pictures using different media.
The final section is a gallery of fairy art by some of the best in the business.
The text is interesting and informative...and never condescending.
Even if you're not in to fairies the book is a good guide to drawing and painting techniques for many aspects of the natural world.
This book is worth every penny of the very reasonable price from Amazon.Recommended!

A book that Covers all you need
This is a book that covers just about everything you need to know, do, draw and paint. With simple informative step by step instrutions, that dont treat you like an idiot. You will very quickly be creating, changing and dreaming up new ways to paint and draw Fairies.
I cant rate this book highly enough...this should be sold as the definative handbook on how to do.
Great value for money and if you buy no other book than this you will not go wrong.

Beautiful!
I love this book - its got gorgeous artwork and easy to follow step-by-step techniques to help you improve as an artist. The amount of colouring techniques shown make it great help for any style of artist, not just the fantasy/faerie orientated. The thing that really makes it stand out from the crowd is its emphasis on originality - there are "swipe files" included, showing different hands, feet, costume, lips, eyes etc - encouraging the reader to play with their artwork, developing their own style.