Reddit mentions: The best conceptual arts books

LIST INCOMING:

I'm so in love with this range of books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Botanicum-Welcome-Museum-Kathy-Willis/dp/1783703946

I guess they're kids books but the illustrations are just beautiful and I actually got the postcard set for the botanical illustrations, and I'm going to have them framed for my house. I adore plant illustrations in this style.

Another one I love is: https://www.amazon.com/Resurrectionist-Lost-Work-Spencer-Black/dp/1594746168

The story is a bit average but the illustrations are so cool, I love anatomical illustrations and mythical beasts.

These two are also amazing: https://www.amazon.com/Where-Why-How-Illustrate-Mysteries/dp/1452108226 and https://www.amazon.com/Who-What-When-Illustrate-Sidekicks/dp/1452128278/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1452128278&pd_rd_r=RRYE5GWH9BWS2TPVV31X&pd_rd_w=K7qR6&pd_rd_wg=Mxunj&psc=1&refRID=RRYE5GWH9BWS2TPVV31X

I totally cried my eyes out over this one: https://www.amazon.com/Radioactive-Marie-Pierre-Curie-Fallout/dp/0061351326

And the illustrations are just so beautiful. Her story is just tragic and she was so brilliant.

If you wanna cry for a couple of years, this one: https://www.amazon.com/Laika-Nick-Abadzis/dp/1596431016

I guess not strictly about the science but there's a good amount of space related information and science tangential stuff, and its just such a beautiful book that I couldn't not recommend it. The final page is basically seared onto my memory forever :c

I'm utterly obsessed with this book: https://www.amazon.com/Sick-Rose-Disease-Medical-Illustration/dp/1938922409

ITS SO INTERESTING, its mostly medical diagrams and descriptions (I obviously have an aesthetic).

Ok, it's a bunch of ebooks, usually in these bundles you get about 15 of them and the bundles cost $15 so $1 each.
If it's stuff like comic books it's usually around 40 items for a normal price for those are like $4-8 each, in the case of books for the more fiction style of books maybe the normal price is usually like $10-20 each, in this case it was 20-25 books so I guess the normal price is $15-20 each and in the case of stuff like the OReilly books the normal price per book is more like $30 and such, in like the Unity asset packs some of those things have a normal price of $50 and so on.

So like for $1:
https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Mythology-Explained-Legends-Goddesses/dp/1633538966 Kindle $12.49
https://www.amazon.com/How-Art-Can-Make-Happy/dp/1452153221 Kindle $9.99
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Why-How-Illustrate-Mysteries/dp/1452108226 Kindle $12.09
https://www.amazon.com/Underachievers-Manifesto-Accomplishing-Little-Feeling/dp/0811853683 Kindle $6.24
https://www.amazon.com/Crap-Dates-Disastrous-Encounters-Single/dp/1452114587 Kindle $4.99
https://www.amazon.com/K-Knifeball-Alphabet-Terrible-Advice/dp/1452103313 Kindle $6.00

I totally don't think ebooks are worth as much as physical books. A physical book takes much more distribution and work to generate and have a much nicer quality and accessibility though it do take up space. So in general I wouldn't buy ebooks at those prices but that's about $61.50 on Amazon to get those ebooks which Humble Bundle charged $1 for.

Here in Sweden were I live education is gratis and you even get a small amount of money to help get by for up to six years of university studies. Then again our taxes are very close to half of GDP and on work income the total taxation is about 3/4 of the income when you've paid all taxes including stuff like VAT and energy and so on. Our system allow people to get pretty useless degrees and our flat salaries and the political ideology make people demand a higher salary just because they have spent equal number of years at university or equal hours at the job not because what they produce was in demand and deserved that payment. So that's a bad system in that it doesn't produce what the market value and lower the production of usable goods and services and waste resources vs something more efficient but it could be solved by offering poor people a loan which they pay back once they have gotten a better job or whatever instead of just not educating them at all.
As an Indian or American citizen rather than a Swedish one a university degree would had cost money here too though. And the school you went to would unlikely had the same reputation as the finest American ones and not necessarily held the same quality. But for those living here their education is paid for by others taxes (which is about twice as large share of the GDP as in America.)

I'm not sure how she feels about marine or science type stuff but I really love it. Anyway, here are my ideas.

• A sculpture of her favorite animal, just something smallish.
  
• Aquascape a small fish tank for her? Here
  
• I liked this coral reef idea Here
  
• She's a genius, so perhaps a informative book? I'd accompany this gift with something else though, I wouldn't just buy her a book... This one is pretty good
  
  If all else fails just make her a card instead of buying one from the shop.

Read the Eisenhorn omnibus, it's good writing, and covers a lot of good material for 40k universe.


Some of the Horus Heresy gets a little fanfictionish, I didn't like a few of them. It really comes down to the quality of the individual writer, some of them are clearly better than others. This goes for all the various books and series set in the universe.


If you want to apreciate the universe check out the online Lexicanum
and a few other web pages. You don't have to read the rulebooks, but they do have a lot of fluff in them. Most of the important stuff can be found online though. There are some really good pure fluff books from GW, like the Imperial Infantryman's uplifting primer

Neat "coffeetable" books in a subject they're into-- examples from my wishlist are The Wonderful Life of the Elements, The Where, Why and How, and 100 Diagrams that Changed the World
Little useful items related to their hobby-- things like stitch markers, blocking mats/pins, a charm for a bracelet, a tool they need/want, cuticle oil, etc.
A used book they've been looking for or one in a genre they're into
Stuff that involves their favorite animal(s)

The blank canvas problem. Happens with every painting (software) :). It takes awhile before imagination kicks in. I use Krita almost every day for three years now. I can recommend Scott L Petrovic's Krita book:https://www.amazon.de/Digital-Painting-KRITA-2-9-Masterpiece/dp/0996851704/ref=sr_1_1?s=books-intl-de&ie=UTF8&qid=1464824720&sr=1-1 and the Krita brushes by David Revoy. Great books about drawing and painting in general by: e.g. Andrew Loomis, Jack Hamm and James Gurney. What would you like to paint? Humans, monsters, characters, animals, landscapes, portraits, comics, characters, abstract paintings, film posters...? Start with what ever is important for you and I'm pretty sure that you will get better at it over time. Here is also a great inspiring blog post by Dani Jones: 101 Projects for Artists and Illustrators http://danidraws.com/blog/2007/02/21/101-projects-for-artists-and-illustrators/. I usually avoid video tutorials, but these are inspiring: https://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL.

Get this (very old but very good) book: Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Tufte.

Browse https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/top/?sort=top&t=all

and maybe http://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Infographics-2015/dp/0544542703/ref=sr_1_1?rps=1&ie=UTF8&qid=1464943088&sr=8-1&keywords=best+infographics&refinements=p_85%3A1 for inspiration.

Consider the coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/infographic-design (it's very basic but a good overview)

Learn basic design concepts like visual hierarchy, white space, type, visual flow, colors, grid layouts, etc.

It should be said that the artist is a Swedish painter named Simon Stalenhag. He's constantly releasing new work like the one you see here.

I would highly recommend checking him out
http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

EDIT:

I see a lot of you are really liking Simons work, so I figured I should also mention that he has published two hardcover books containing larger prints of his work along with backstory for most of his art.
Tales from the Loop and another that just came out 11 days ago (November 1st, 2016) called Things from the Flood.
Both books are fairly cheap and would make great Christmas gifts in my opinion

If anyone is a fan of Pen-and-Paper RPG's, Free League made a game using his art called Tales From the Loop

You can also get just the art for Tales From the Loop and the upcoming expansion for the the games Things From the Flood, which has some of my favorite pieces of his.

If you're interested in buying, Modiphius has the stuff available for purchase in your local currencies.

Learning Krita is easier than learning Blender for sure. A lot of effort went on the documentation: https://docs.krita.org/Main_Page . I also propose a serie of tutorial for beginner here, and more advanced there. If you prefer books ; I advice this one written by a dev of Krita. If you want to be instant fan of Krita for texture/tiles design, just open a new small canvas (eg. 256x256px ), scribble something, and activate the 'Wrap Around mode' with W key. It's magic ;)

Very nice, but the actual imperial documentation on dealing with Orks is somewhat less accurate.

If you can find a copy of The Uplifting Primer (for less than $300) I highly recommend it, it's a hilarious read.

If you want a taste of concept art, I recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-World-Concept-Video-Games/dp/1624650201

Fairly awesome resource for a pretty low price, and if you happen to live in the North Texas area, the author teaches Concept Art at a community college here.

The map itself was produced by a publisher in germany: http://www.kalimedia.com/Atlas_of_True_Names_Canada.html

but appeared in (the very excellent) Best American Infographics 2014 http://www.amazon.ca/The-Best-American-Infographics-2014/dp/0547974515

Sofie stop licking my nose!

This would so make my day: Swear Word Adult coloring book ($3.38 with Prime). Coloring is super soothing to me but sometimes frustration wins out so I think coloring swear words would be so helpful for those times. It would most definitely make my day :D

I have both his books, Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood and they're both very nicely printed. There's a relatively short story for each as well that isn't particularly interesting, but definitely fleshes out his world a little more and connects the art all together a little bit.

Allow me to recommend the book Empire of Death, or just a Google image search for "gilded skeleton relic". This is one of those places where the real world has already gone so hard and so weird that it legit seems like a fantasy setting.

He's released some hardcover books of his work: 'Tales from the Loop', 'Things from the Flood'

He's also working on his Third, which looks like it might be my favorite

The Sabbat Worlds Crusade is written as an in-universe "coffee table book." I wish they'd make more stuff like this.

Both of these are great reads:

Imperial Munitorum Manual


The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, Damocles Gulf Edition

edit: woah I bought these for $13.59 USD when they first came out...

Yep, from good ole [Amazon](The Electric State https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501181416/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_maVQBbK5G7M44)

I'm glad you asked that. I have a couple of wonderful books with photos.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Heavenly-Bodies-Treasures-Spectacular-Catacombs/dp/0500251959/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Empire-Death-Cultural-Ossuaries/dp/0500251789/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

The best ones I have seen myself were in Italy and The Czech Republic.

Excuse the shitty site, but it has some detail about the purported history of the skull, which is venerated as that of Mary Magdalene:

http://www.magdalenepublishing.org/about/

Updated so that it is on imgur just for you soldier. And remember, "Failure to produce this document at a superior officer's request at ANY TIME carries the penalty of death." [Opening page, Uplifting Primer]

You best make sure you have a copy on hand as the next officer may not be so lenient.

Amazon has a lot of them, but This is the one I bought. It's like doubled in price since I bought it though.

OK Cern, if you are so science-y why do you have your own tarot deck?

And how come it's so damn expensive?

Book recommendation: The Empire Of Death by Paul Koudounaris

It's an oversized book with 100's of color pictures of just this sort of thing (but this pic would be tame compared to most in there). I have a copy on my coffee table. Great conversation starter at cocktail parties.

Sounds interesting. Is there any way to get that book for a more reasonable price than this https://www.amazon.com/Xenology-Research-Bestiary-Biegel-Warhammer/dp/1844162826?

I would like to get this for my son.

If you get into the rest of the series, or if you'd simply just like to see more art, check The Sky.

If you like this, check out Stålenhag's books: Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood, and The Electric State

How has no one linked to his books yet?! I thought this looked familiar. I've got these two in my Amazon wish list for Christmas: Tales from the Loop & Things from the Flood.

The Amazon page for the hardcover book has it listed as September 4, 2018.

• https://www.amazon.com/Electric-State-Simon-St%C3%A5lenhag/dp/1501181416/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524251971&sr=1-1

This one's by Simon Stålenhag, and it's from his collection called The Electric State - you can find all three of his books on Amazon.

> (as evidenced by every single one I've heard referring to the main character as "Captain" instead of "Brother-Captain", and the last one I watched someone called his service studs "rank buttons")

Sounds like they aren't reviewing their necessary documentation. They better do so before the Commissar finds out.

seriously though I am actually pretty excited. THQ has done wonders with the DoW series (even creating one of the best game intro scenes EVAR) and I'm a fan of the God of War/Darksiders gameplay style they are using.

Fire Warrior was fun, but lacked a lot of the polish I had been hoping for (I did however scream "SUCK IT TIN CAN" the first time I got a hold of and used a bolter in that game). The multiplayer was awful too.

It's still on amazon, but v v expensive - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imperial-Infantrymans-Uplifting-Primer/dp/1844164845

Give this hot little number a taste.
http://www.amazon.com/heaven-Molly-H-D-Wright-ebook/dp/B00IP20KG4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416429780&sr=8-1&keywords=molly+h.d.+wright

Amano is releasing his art book soon. buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616550392

People are really fucking weird about their cakedays.

The book in question is Xenology: Notes and Research from the Alien Bestiary of Biegel

How's about "The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science".

Tales from the Loop

Tales from the Flood

The Making of Tron

Intron Depot

Alien: The Archive

Akira Animation Archives

The Art of Deus Ex Universe

$250 used

Buy the book. It's a short sci-fi story in a universe that he both wrote and painted. One of the more engrossing sci-fi stories I've read.

Doh, http://www.amazon.com/Rocks-On-The-Beach-ebook/dp/B00896PNPO

Five books left in stock

https://www.amazon.com/TRA-Edge-Becoming-Axel-Vervoordt/dp/9490693170#

And some pictures of the exhibit http://www.axel-vervoordt.com/en/inside/foundation/exhibitions/tra-edge-of-becoming

Its creepy art gallery stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/heaven-Molly-H-D-Wright-ebook/dp/B00IP20KG4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394293888&sr=8-1&keywords=Heaven+Molly+HD+Wright

It might makes sense if you read the book.

There is a new-ish book out on ossuaries, mostly pictures:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Empire-Death-Cultural-Ossuaries/dp/0500251789

I just purchased his book Tale from the Loop--marvelous stuff. And, there's a sequel Things from the Flood--I will be sending for that, too!

Found the english names for the books.
Tales from the Loop
Things from the Flood

here we go. found my book.

As I said, it looks fairly crappy compared to the books on there now. While scrolling I found a cat swear word book that is going in my shopping card immediately.