An ingenious interactive art book that uses simple shapes to create stunning creative designs.

Ophelia Pang is a Hong Kong-based illustrator who loves to talk with colour and shape. These two key elements are central to all her own work and she has produced this interactive art book to encourage readers to start designing, drawing and colouring using colour and shape as starting points.

Ophelia Pang’s Interactive Art Book is an art exercise book aimed at creating simple yet striking design work using accessible exercises such as colouring, collage and simple shape drawings. From finding sophisticated colour combinations to mark-making, and paper cut-outs to simple drawings, this book will inspire anyone with a creative mind.

Focusing on colour and shape throughout, the book includes exercises on designing with variations in one colour, starting with a square and a Matisse-style exercise of paper cut-outs. Also included is a section of colour strips that can be used as a reference for colour combinations, or pulled out and cut up.

A practical companion to help kids enjoy outdoor activities and adventures even when it’s rainy, snowy or windy.

As the weather turns into autumn and the kids start watching more television and stare at the computer, how can you get them out and about to enjoy the cooler months? Outdoor enthusiasts Steph and Katie are teachers and mothers and have years of experience of finding new and novel ways to get kids to enjoy the great outdoors, whatever the weather.

This great little tome is packed with ideas for games, activities and nature crafts that are perfectly suited to the autumnal and winter months of rain and wind. Activities range from puddle painting and making your own nature paint brushes, to making wind spinners from golden leaves and feathers. Why not try puddle pouncing or raindrop racing, or create a pool and spa for an elf? Or make a leafy woven kite, windmill or nature parachute for the windy weather?

Nature offers loads of autumnal bits and bobs just waiting for a creative hand. And if you don’t want to stay out for too long, the book lists things to collect outdoors for taking home and used for stay-at-home projects.

The book encourages youngsters to see the excitement of wind, snow, rain and to enjoy the elements with fun projects that excite the imagination.

The distinctive style of the Regency period is a source of endless fascination for fashion academics and historians, living historians, re-enactors and costume designers for stage and screen.
Author and fashion historian Cassidy Percoco has delved into little-known museum hoards to create a stunning collection of 26 garments, many with clear provenance tied to a specific location, which have never before been published and never – or very rarely – displayed. Most of the garments have an aspect in their construction that has not been previously documented, from a style of skirt trim to the method of gown closure.
This practical guide begins with a general history of the early 19th-century women’s dress. This is followed by 26 patterns of gowns, spencers, chemises, and corsets, each with an illustration of the finished piece and description of its construction.
This must-have guide is an essential reference for anyone interested in the fashions or the history of the period, or for anyone wishing to recreate their own beautiful Regency clothing.

The pleasures to be had from slowing down can be many, with connections to sustainability, simplicity, reflection, and tuning into traditional and other multicultural textile traditions.

Slow Stitch is a much-needed guide to adopting a less-is-more approach, valuing quality over quantity, and bringing a meaningful and thoughtful approach to textile practice.

Claire Wellesley-Smith introduces a range of ways in which you can slow your textile work down, including:

• Using simple techniques inspired by traditional practice (including hand-stitch rhythms)
• Reusing and re-inventing materials (reuse even old textile projects)
• Limiting your equipment
• Mending revisited (practical and decorative techniques)
• Project ideas and resources that help towards making a more sustainable textile practice

Richly illustrated throughout, and showcasing work from the best textile artists who work in this way, this is a truly inspirational book for those looking to reconnect with their craft and to find a new way of working.

Zen of Drawing inspires you to pick up a pen, pencil or an iPad and start drawing what you see with a ‘zen’ approach.

Author Peter Parr has spent his career in animation successfully teaching people to draw and encouraging students to nurture their skills through observational drawing. He advocates a fresh way of looking closely at your subject and enlisting an emotional response, in order to fully appreciate the nature of what you are about to draw.

You will learn that whatever you are drawing, it is essential not only to copy its outline but also to ask yourself: is it soft, smooth or rough to the touch? How heavy is it? Is it fragile or solid? Then, having grasped the fundamental characteristics, or zen, of the object, make corresponding marks on the paper – crisp textures, a dense wash, a scratchy or floating line.

The chapters cover: keeping a sketchbook; tools (pen, pencil, charcoal, watercolour and iPad); perspective; line and volume; tone and texture; structure and weight; movement and rhythm; energy, balance and composition.

Like New York, London can be enjoyed all day and all night. This insider’s guide gives you the gen on where, when and how to enjoy London at any hour. It covers places to stay, places to eat, drink, dance and be entertained and informed. Including all the main and famous places in London but with the added twist of highlighting some of the lesser-known parks, palaces and museums.

The book is structured by hours of the day, so it gives the ideal time to do any number of great things in a great city, from breakfast places and tea at 4, to cocktails at 6 and midnight walks. Discover gin palaces, walks beside the Thames, Hawksmoor churches and haunted pubs with this indispensable guide. Each entry lists the nearest tube stop so this grand city can be explored with an Oyster card!

Author Matt Brown from legendary London blog the Londonist is probably the most London-obsessed person there is. He brings his own extensive knowledge of the city to the book, revealing an array of new experiences even for the long-term Londoner and the discerning tourist.

With London Underground going 24 hours in September, this is a timely book to discover some of the hidden charms of this fascinating city.

A great guide for painters who want to experiment with mixed media and make their landscape paintings more adventurous.

Popular artist and teacher, Soraya French, encourages readers to experiment with mixing media and to create more adventurous paintings and broaden their artistic horizons.

The media that Soraya uses in this book are acrylics, pastels and collage and she shows how to bring the best out of mixing these media with handy tips, some simple projects and several step-by-step demonstrations.

Landscape, and the way it changes over the seasons, is the ideal subject for experimenting with different textural effects using mixed media. Contemporary Landscapes in Mixed Media is divided into four seasonal chapters, with each section dealing with the colours, shapes, patterns and textures particular to each season.

There is information on mixing colours relevant to each season, as well as interesting ways of painting flowers and other details of nature, how to create exciting compositions, and how to add architectural aspects within the landscape. In some landscapes figures may be added in order to animate the composition and create a narrative.

This practical and inspirational book will help and encourage the reader to explore the fascinating potential of mixed media and to adopt a freer attitude in their painting.

A follow up to Chess for Children, this is a very imaginative way of building up your children’s knowledge and interest in chess through a series of fun chess games and activities. The same two cheeky children, Jess and Jamie, talk though the games in language that kids would relate to – and this time they are joined by their friends Harry and Marnie so that group chess games can be explored.

The book includes puzzles and games, some easy ‘variants’ of chess, and a guess-the-next move section, along with ‘revision’ pages to help remind children of the chess basics. All are accompanied by easy-to-read chess boards and fun illustrations.

Chess in schools and clubs is growing all the time and our author is a leading light in kids chess, teaching at many London schools, including Dulwich College.

The book works well as a companion to the earlier book, Chess for Children, but also as a standalone activity book. Whether your child is just beginning to learn chess or already immersed in the subject, this book will help encourage their interest and love of the subject. A great book for both parents and teachers.

Suitable for children aged 7 and up.

The events of your life, from local walks to exotic trips, can provide endless inspiration for textile art. This inspiring book shows you how to record your experiences, using sketchbooks, journals and photography, to create personal narratives that can form a starting point for more finished stitched-textile pieces.

Acclaimed textile artist and teacher Cas Holmes, whose work is often inspired by her life and the journeys she makes, helps you find inspiration through your own life and explains how to record what you see in sketchbooks and journals, which can often become beautiful objects in themselves. She explains how you can use photography, both as documentation and as inspiration, and sometimes incorporate it into the work itself, along with found objects and ephemera.

Throughout the book are useful techniques that can be harnessed to add extra interest to your work, such as methods for making layered collages, how to ‘sketch’ with stitch, and advice on design and colour. If you want to create beautiful, unique work inspired by your life and travels, this is the perfect book for you.

Shirley Trevena is a successful and popular watercolourist with a huge international fan base. Throughout her career Shirley has pushed the boundaries of watercolour and is regarded as one of Britain’s most innovative artists in that medium.

Shirley’s watercolours are vibrant in colour, visually inspiring and strong in composition. In this book, Shirley shares her thoughts, ideas, stories and sketches of more than 100 paintings to give a valuable insight into the evolving work of a much-loved artist.

Shirley breaks the conventional rules of watercolour in many different ways: through her exciting compositions, strange perspectives and above all, the strength and vibrancy of her colour combinations. In this exciting and inspiring book, Shirley gives her personal view of painting and shares her creative process with us.

Every chessplayer who aspires to achieve chess mastery must learn the techniques for winning a won game. It is the perennial problem which confronts players at all levels of play. This book will enable chessplayers to better recognize their positional advantages and the ways in which these can be used in order to bring them closer to victory. It also provides many instructive examples of using this knowledge to reach a faster and more spectacular victory.

Mr. Paul M. Albert, Jr. has been donating over $2000 per year to the most brilliantly played at both the Women’s and Men’s United States Championships for over 20 years. This book presents, describes and illustrates the most significant examples, with emphasis on what can be learned from them in terms of winning a won game.

This title, suitable for both novices and children, allows readers to find the right way to deliver a checkmate in one, two or more moves from hundreds of positions provided by the author. By tackling these puzzles, they can begin to think like chessplayers and visualize, calculate and advance.