An attractive, highly illustrated little sourcebook of ideas and practical exercises, Collins Artist's Little Book of Inspiration is for artists looking for new creativity. Through a combination of practical instruction, illustrated projects and step-by-step demonstrations in watercolour, oil and acrylic, popular artist Hazel Soan explains how to develop your observational skills and unleash your creativity.The book shows you how to find inspiration all around you - 'seeing' like an artist, recognizing potential subjects and considering new approaches. Hazel Soan encourages you to experiment with papers and other surfaces, refresh your palette and understand what different materials can achieve.From concept to composition let this little book be your guide to what to include in your work, how to be creative with colour and utilize tone and texture. Learn to see the world around you and the art materials you use in a new light, with ideas to inspire you around the house, out and about and on your wider travels. This attractive book also contains inspiring gallery pages which reveal how other artists have found new approaches to their chosen subjects.

This colorful board book reveals how God created the world in simple, easy-to-remember rhymes as Collins uses geometric designs to create bright, beautiful, and exiting pictures that preschoolers will want to look at over and over again. Full color.

An attractive handy guide to the fascinating world of watercolour, Collins Artist's Little Book of Watercolour is an essential sourcebook for artists of all levels of experience and ability.

This craftsman's companion celebrates 31 of the woodturners and innovative artists from around the world who have taken bowl-making to a higher level of aesthetic form. Each artist’s profile includes full-color, studio-quality photographs of their most spectacular work, along with insights on their design ideas and objectives.

An acute and deeply insightful book of essays exploring poetic form and the role of instinct and imagination within form—from former poet laureate, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author Robert Hass. Robert Hass—former poet laureate, winner of the National Book Award, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize—illuminates the formal impulses that underlie great poetry in this sophisticated, graceful, and accessible volume of essays drawn from a series of lectures he delivered at the renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A Little Book on Form brilliantly synthesizes Hass’s formidable gifts as both a poet and a critic and reflects his profound education in the art of poetry. Starting with the exploration of a single line as the basic gesture of a poem, and moving into an examination of the essential expressive gestures that exist inside forms, Hass goes beyond approaching form as a set of traditional rules that precede composition, and instead offers penetrating insight into the true openness and instinctiveness of formal creation. A Little Book on Form is a rousing reexamination of our longest lasting mode of literature from one of our greatest living poets.

Behind the Christmas songs we love to sing lie fascinating stories that will enrich your holiday celebration. Taking you inside the nativity of over thirty favorite songs and carols, Ace Collins introduces you to people you’ve never met, stories you’ve never heard, and meanings you’d never have imagined. The next time you and your family sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," you’ll have a new understanding of its message and popular roots. You’ll discover how "Angels from the Realms of Glory," with its sublime lyrics and profound theology, helped usher in a quiet revolution in worship. You’ll learn the strange history of the haunting and powerful "O Holy Night," including the song’s surprising place in the history of modern communications. And you’ll step inside the life of Mark Lowry and find out how he came to pen the words to the contemporary classic "Mary, Did You Know?"Still other songs such as "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" trace back to mysterious origins--to ninth-century monks, nameless clergy, and unknown commoners of ages past. Joining hands with such modern favorites as "White Christmas" and "The Christmas Song," they are part of the legacy of inspiration, faith, tears, love, and spiritual joy that is Christmas. From the rollicking appeal of "Jingle Bells" to the tranquil beauty of "Silent Night," the great songs of Christmas contain messages of peace, hope, and truth. Each in its own way expresses a facet of God’s heart and celebrates the birth of his greatest gift to the world--Jesus, the most wonderful Christmas Song of all.

In May 2012, bestselling author Neil Gaiman delivered the commencement address at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, in which he shared his thoughts about creativity, bravery, and strength. He encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians, writers, and dreamers to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he encouraged them to make good art. The book Make Good Art, designed by renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd, contains the full text of Gaiman’s inspiring speech.