Self-portraiture is a remarkably rich and varied genre, acting for centuries as a means for artists to explore their inner and outer selves. This book looks deeper into the motives and thoughts that lie behind the creative process, and it also balances the goals of technical profiency and emotional authenticity so the artist is better equipped to make a compelling self-portrait. Written by identical twins, it offers a personalized, practical and theoretical guide to this most powerful of art forms. The text looks at the whole creative process involved in making a self-portrait, and extended step-by-step demonstrations follow three differing approaches to self-portraiture. It emphasizes the use of good observational skills, expressive paint use and a highly practical and critical self-analysis, and offers a thorough cultural and theoretical review of the history and categorization of the self-portrait, as well as an analysis of two master self-portraits. Aimed at all artists and designers, animators and portrait painters and illustrated with 87 colour images.
Globalization has brought with it many difficult and contradictory phenomena: violence, deep national insecurities, religious divisions and individual insecurities. This book takes a critical look at three key areas - globalism, nationalism, and state-terror - to confront common mythologies and identify the root causes of the problems we face. Too many commentators still argue that globalization is predominantly a neo-liberal economic phenomenon; that nation-states are on the way out, and that terror is something that primarily comes from below. Global Matrix exposes the limitations of this argument. The authors explore four main questions: -- What is the cultural-political nature of contemporary globalization? -- How adequate, particularly in the context of nation-states, is a politics of democratic nationalism? -- How are we to understand new and old nations in the context of changes across the late twentieth century and into the present? -- Where does national violence come from and what does it mean for a 'war on terror'?Written by two leading scholars, this is a lucid study of what place the nation-state has in a globalizing world that will appeal to students across the political and social sciences.