Bestselling artist and writer Hazel Soan delivers a concise and approachable guide to portrait painting, with simple exercises and step-by-step demonstrations.

Whether you are using watercolour, oils or acrylic, Learn to Paint Portraits Quickly explains the key elements of catching a likeness in portrait painting in a mixture of mediums. The book is filled with easy-to-follow instructions and step-by-step exercises that can be digested in a short period of time, and written in an accessible way for all artists to learn about portraiture.

The key elements of portraiture covered in this concise book include:

• Finding the likeness
• Creating form – the light and shade
• The facial features
• Painting the hair
• Skin tone and colouring
• The body, clothing and background

Illustrated with Hazel’s magnificent, colourful paintings, and with practical advice and demonstrations throughout, this book is the perfect tool to help beginners master portrait painting – quickly.

From the Ghostbusters HQ in New York to Nemo’s fish tank in Sydney, from the Phantom of the Opera’s Parisian lair to scenes from Grand Theft Auto in LA, this is an amazing atlas of imaginary locations in real-life cities around the world. Locations from film, TV, books, computer games and comics are ingeniously plotted on a series of beautiful vintage-looking maps.

Feauturing 14 of the world’s greatest cities, the maps show exactly where your favourite characters lived, loved, worked and played, and where iconic scenes took place. The locations have been painstakingly tracked down, mapped, annotated and wittily divulged by the authors, and an extensive index helps you find them all. Within the pages of this book, you’ll discover:

• Where in London super-spies James Bond and George Smiley are neighbours.

• The route of the exciting San Francisco car chase in Bullitt.

• The Tokyo homes of all the magical girls from the classic Sailor Moon anime.

And many more fascinating locations drawn from the world’s imagination.

Accompanying the maps are illuminating essays that explain how the authors came to their decisions, along with explorations of the key locations and fun timelines of imaginary events. Find out how to get to Sesame Street, where to join Starfleet and thousands of other places besides, in this indispensable guidebook to all those places you always wanted to visit – if only they were real. 

Discover how to combine leaves and flowers to create stunning collaged artworks.

Leading flower artist Jennie Ashmore brings the art of pressing leaves and flowers to life in this glorious guide and showcase of her work. Through simple instructions, step-by-step demonstrations and beautiful illustrations, she shows how to collect, place, press and embellish a variety of natural materials to create unique works of art that convey a strong sense of time and place.

Following the success of her previous book, The Art of Pressed Flowers and Leaves, Jennie continues to push the boundaries of this classic and newly revitalized craft. She provides a focus on a wider range of plants, often locally sourced. Other groundbreaking techniques include how to design with different shapes like squares, circles and diamonds, capturing seasonal colour, painting interesting backgrounds and experimenting with rubbings, hand-made paper, collagraph printing and plant-extracted inks.

Featuring stunning images from the author throughout, this gorgeous book is a creative and practical introduction to making art with natural materials.

New and experimental ways to capture landscape in acrylics.

Landscape artist Paul Bailey’s fascination with the natural world is sensationally conveyed in his colourful and semi-abstract paintings. In Experimental Nature in Acrylics, he reveals his techniques for the first time – making it simple for readers to produce their own work that is abstract, evocative and full of vivid colour.

Through easy-to-follow explanations and step-by-step demonstrations, Paul describes how to manipulate the medium in surprising – yet often simple – ways. Readers will learn how distil craggy cliffs, rolling farmland hills, tidal rivers or flat, open-skied wilderness in striking and unusual colour palettes. There are tips on how to paint organic shapes and using abstract elements in the natural landscape as the basis for a painting, and how to create a compositional sense of rhythm.

Paul’s beautiful and contemporary work appears throughout the book and acts as a masterclass in scraping, pulling, weathering and splattering the paint. As well as showing how to build layer upon layer, the process of construction and how to tease a sense of movement from a static image.

This essential guide is a must for anyone wishing to augment their understanding of the acrylic medium and appreciation of composition and colour, and to liberate their own beautiful paintings.

Escape on an island colouring adventure with the Sunday Times bestselling illustrator Millie Marotta.

Relax, unwind and get creative with colouring as you island-hop your way around the world. Immerse yourself in an island paradise where lizards lounge and sea birds soar and add your own palette of colour to Millie’s glorious and intricate wildlife illustrations.

Here are drawings ready to be brought to life with colours that are inspired by the world’s fascinating island habitats, from Madagascar to the remote Svalbard, from Vancouver to the Galápagos Islands. Discover Cozumel Island’s pygmy raccoon, the Komodo dragon, the Mauritian flying fox and the Javan rhino. Colour in exotic pitcher plants, orchids and vines, all illustrated in Millie’s much-loved signature style.

With inspiration for every fan of colouring, come and escape to your own island wonderland.

Following on from the hugely popular Treasury of Folklore: Seas and Rivers and Woodlands and Forests comes Treasury of Folklore: Stars and Skies, an exploration of the mysteries of the stars, skies and heavens above.

People have gazed up at the same stars for millennia, trading stories about them; conjuring gods and goddesses; mapping the constellations; and navigating the complex human world below. The tales, traditions and myths included here traverse countries and continents and have been chosen to highlight how humans are linked through time and place, with shared dreams, fears and ways of rationalising the unknown.

Under ‘Stars and Heavens’ Willow delves into rosy fingered dawn and the hubris of Icarus, the Greek myths surrounding the constellations and the omen of meteors, the trials of the Hawaiian goddess Hina and the legend of the rabbit in the moon. In the section on ‘Skies’ we are introduced to winged Pegasus and the Firebird, the Witch of Westray and stories of storms, the mysteries of the Northern Lights and unexplained UFOs. 

Treasury of Folklore: Stars and Skies is a fascinating portal into a rich history of myths surrounding the sky, an aspect of the natural world that continues to fascinate and confound.

New ideas for working with nature to nurture creativity in felted and embroidered textile art.

Immerse yourself in nature and rewild your creative practice with inspiration from textile artist Jeanette Appleton. With a focus on the versatile medium of felt, she takes readers through a series of ideas for working with nature to boost creativity, inspire, and make us more sustainable as artists. The book covers:

• How to capture the nuances of nature through creating exciting felt surfaces – lines of sea, frosted puddles, hedge and grass – and how to translate them into subtleties of texture and stitch.

• Transforming recycled cloth by bonding memories, mixed-media and found objects into your work.

• Cutting and repairing techniques: making cuts and slits in the layers of fabric to reveal the secret strata of nature beneath, echoing the planet’s fragility.

• How to make the best use of sketchbooks, maps and mapping to record inspiration from time spent in nature.

• A variety of strategies for overcoming artist’s block, from revisiting past diaries and sketchbooks to interacting differently with your local environment. 

Throughout, the author constantly challenges the felt process, discovering a new creative working practice through connecting with the outside world.

Richly illustrated with exciting examples of the author’s beautiful and reflective work, this inspirational and practical guide will appeal to textile and felt artists of all levels.

Explore ‘Beatle Land’ and the iconic sites associated with The Beatles’ fame.

The ‘Fab Four’ – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – were all born and brought up in Liverpool, and this illustrated guide reveals why the city was crucial to their musical success. Following in their footsteps around Liverpool and Merseyside, the book explores the places that influenced The Beatles’ musical direction and eventual stardom. Discover the significance of the locations behind hit singles such as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘Penny Lane’, as well as iconic music venue The Cavern Club. The book’s handy location map will guide you to all the sights, including:

• St Peter’s Church where Paul famously first met John, who was playing in his band The Quarrymen in the grounds.
• The Mersey Ferry which provided a great venue for the Beatles to perform in 1961 and 1962.
• Strawberry Fields where John visited summer fairs with his aunt, and which was the inspiration behind the hit single ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
• Penny Lane and its bus roundabout, celebrated in the song with the same name.
• The Cavern Club, the iconic music venue where The Beatles played 292 times and where Brian Epstein first saw them perform in 1961.
• John, Paul, George and Ringo’s childhood homes.

The book also looks at the band’s early childhood influences including schools, parents and relatives that left an indelible mark on the character of the boys as they grew up, as well as their manager Brian Epstein’s role and influence as another Liverpool lad. Fully illustrated, this is the ultimate Beatles fan’s guide to Liverpool.

A glorious treasury of literary curiosities for every night of the year.

Bedside Companion for Book Lovers contains an eclectic mix of fact and fiction, letters, diaries, essays and dedications, all suffused with the joys of books and reading. The perfect gift for the bibliophile in your life, it contains snippets from some of the greatest writers and book collectors from throughout history, including:

• Charles Dickens on the smell of books
• Maya Angelou on the pleasures of reading aloud
• Virginia Woolf on finding space for writing
• Nick Hornby on reading for pure enjoyment

and much more. Along the way, you’ll find advice on how to look after your most precious volumes, what to do when books start taking over your home, and where to find the most atmospheric libraries and bookshops around the world. Keep this beautifully illustrated book by your bedside and wander into a magical world of books every night of the year.

WINNER of the Architectural Book of the Year Award 2023, Monograph (Building) Category.

The story of the building of an iconic mid-century housing estate, that is often seen as the model for housing architecture. Fully illustrated with commissioned photography of the interiors and exteriors, archive images and newly commissioned writing by leading architectural historians, plus interviews with people on the estate to capture their story.

Following World War II, the population in the City of London plummeted, and with a duty to provide housing for those working in the area – such as nurses, policemen and doctors –  the City Corporation commissioned architect Geoffry Powell in 1952 to design the Golden Lane Estate. Powell invited Christoph Bon and Jo Chamberlin to join him in developing a detailed design for the  Estate. They would later become Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, working on world-renowned projects such as the Barbican Estate and the University of Leeds. Golden Lane Estate, now Grade II and Grade II* listed is often cited as being a model estate.

With its high level of detailing, use of materials, colour, its humane scale, thoughtfulness of space, light, communal spaces, leisure facilities and integrated shops, it is exemplary, particularly for social housing. It was deemed as a success from the off and remains popular today, with many original tenants and/or their families still choosing to live there. What sets the estate apart is the sense of community and neighbourliness which is promoted by the architecture and design. 

The classic poem, Goblin Market (1862) by Christina Rossetti, tells the story of Lizzie and Laura, who are tempted by the fruit sold by the goblin merchants. In this fully illustrated and beautiful volume, illustrator Georgie McAusland brings the words and story to life.

SHORTLISTED in the V&A Illustration Awards and the World Illustration Awards.

Breathing new life into the Victorian tradition of illustrated poems, this book reads like a picture story book. The stunning illustrations illuminate and drive the narrative forward as in all good story books. It tells the tale of the two sisters drifting apart as Laura succumbs to the forbidden fruit sold by the goblins, but the bonds of sisterhood prove strong. The poem has fascinated for generations and been the subject of various interpretations. This illustrated version brings the words and story alive for a new generation.

Christina Rossetti is considered the foremost female poet of her time, and her poetry still resonates with women’s lives today, as she entwines themes of sexuality, sisterhood, love and temptation in her work. All of these themes are encapsulated in Goblin Market. The book includes an introduction to the poem by novelist Kirsty Gunn, so all readers – for pleasure or study – can understand its riches. 

A visually stunning and beautifully written celebration of park life around the world.

Parks are an absolutely essential part of modern life. From the author who brought you Lido, here are 50 of the world’s greatest parks – but not just a list of the examples we already know. Yes, we’ll tell you about those storied greats such as Central Park in New York and Phoenix Park in Dublin, but we’ll also take you to the Philippines, to Australia, to provincial Britain and around the world to show you the most historic and the most interesting, the newest and most cutting-edge that mix the best of nature and architecture. We’ll explore what you can find there, who goes there, why they are important, and how parks respond to their environments, including ones over a road, on old rail lines or in Berlin’s former airport. Examples include:

• Freeway Park, Seattle, USA: a bizarre and brilliant brutalist park over a motorway.

• Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, Brazil: this one contains amazing galleries and theatres.

• Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, UK: mountains within a city.

• Adelaide’s parks, Australia: unique in that the entire city centre is enclosed by parks.

and many, many more. Illustrated with glorious photographs throughout, this book is a fascinating record of the world’s most interesting and innovative parks, and the people who use them – you’ll want to visit them all.