Roy G. Biv: An Exceedingly Surprising Book about Color

Didier Ludot

Little Black Dress: Vintage Treasure

An essential piece of clothing in a woman's closet, the little black dress has maintained its popularity thought all trends because it is always the "right" thing to wear. It is a timeless classic and all great designers have created their own variation. Didier Ludot owns the most famous vintage clothing store in Paris, the fashion capital of the world. The store, La Petit Robe Noire, is housed in the prestigious Palais Royal, just steps away from the Louvre. Ludot has meticulously built and maintained a collection of black dresses, which features designs by Chanel, Balmain, Balenciaga, and Gaultier, among others. Photographs of these dresses are juxtaposed with archive photos of Romy Schneider, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Sofia Loren, Edith Piaf, Paloma Picasso, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor - all in their black dress finest. Ludot's collection is a delightful tour of the black dress from yesterday to today.

James Danziger

Cecil Beaton: The Art of the Scrapbook

As one of the 20th century's most important photographers, Cecil Beaton documented lives both famous and quotidian in dozens of scrapbooks now held by Sotheby's London. In the course of his decades-long career as a photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as a British war correspondent, Beaton helped invent the cult of the celebrity image. In these pages, reproduced here for the first time, you will enter a fabulous and surreal party where Tallulah Bankhead rubs shoulders with a bust of Voltaire and a portrait of Stravinsky, and where Beaton's first trip on the Queen Mary coincides with Queen Elizabeth's coronation.

Sharon Finmark, Trevor Waugh, Alwyn Crawshaw

Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner: Great Value with More Than 70 Step-By-Step Exercises

This popular book provides all the information you need to get started in watercolour painting. Full of clear, simple advice and more than 70 step-by-step demonstrations, Watercolour for the Absolute Beginner will teach even the least confident of beginners the skills and techniques needed to start painting. In this easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide, three professional artists explain all the basic watercolour techniques. Top TV artist Alwyn Crawshaw demonstrates the basic techniques including brushstrokes, colour mixing and depicting distance and foreground to get you started in watercolour. Lecturer and Artist Sharon Finmark explains how you can paint realistic figures, covering scale and proportion, mixing convincing skin colours and portraying movement and light effectively. Artist and teacher Trevor Waugh demonstrates techniques for painting animals - domestic, farmyard and wild. Starting with simple animal shapes, Trevor takes you through the rudiments of 3D shapes, tone and colour and the tricks of using foreshortening in your work.