This title helps you produce beautiful and lively studies in oil, acrylic, gouache, waterpaints, pencil, charcoal and pastels. Professional art teachers guide you through essential techniques, with practical tips on using models or working from photographs, sketching, creating strong poses and backgrounds, and expressing character. It explains how to draw and paint skies, water, foliage and other natural elements, including a variety of landscapes such as coastal vistas, rolling hills and city skylines. It includes helpful advice on artists' materials, canvases and equipment, and on using all types of media. It features galleries of professional drawings and paintings, and 70 exercises and projects to help you to learn and practise techniques and create original works of art. This comprehensive, practical book offers budding artists the chance to take lessons with highly acclaimed experts, and learn the art of drawing and painting people and the world around them. The book begins with advice about materials and equipment, then is divided into chapters on nudes, portraits, town and country, and water and sky. It also features a chapter on birds and aquatic wildlife in landscapes.Easy-to-follow tutorials are complemented by beautiful galleries of professional art. With over 1700 inspiring illustrations and 70 exercises and projects, this instructive book will show you how to produce your own amazing works of art with confidence.