Sheep Portraits 2017

This stunning collection of portraits shows sheep as you’ve never seen them before. Featuring commissioned studio photography of champion breeds styled to perfection prior to competition, the animals showcased here are works of ovine art. Beautiful color portraits of 42 different breeds from around the globe are accompanied by graphic charts containing all the essential breed information. There’s also a potted history of sheep, plus reportage photography of the behind-the-scenes primping and preening at the agricultural shows, to document the care lavished on prizewinning sheep as well as the nail-biting judging process. Whether you regard it as a photographic exposition, an amusing objet d’art, or a shepherd’s delight packed with visual and texual breed information, this is a unique giftbook destined to adorn coffee tables around the globe.

- A selection of goats and sheep portraits in a profile, a sideward glance, or direct gazeWhen American photographer Kevin Horan moved from city to country, he found among his animal companions goats and sheep whose chorus of sounds suggested they were not just herd animals, but perhaps individuals as well. Experienced in portraiture, Horan decided to photograph them in his studio, as though they were privileged clients. The resulting images ask us to notice the variety, dignity, and personalities of these lowliest of creatures, who speak to us through the camera in a profile, a sideward glance, or direct gaze. With different coats, faces, and expressions, they are funny, fascinating, intelligent, curious, engaging others who command our undivided attention and respect. They remind us that we too are fellow creatures - and the camera isn't always on us.

R.J. Kerns animal portraits offer perspective on the meaning of pastoral in contemporary time.

In 2016, award-winning Minnesota-based photographer R. J. Kern made portraits of youth contestants at Minnesota county fairs. Each participant—some as young as four years old—had spent a year raising an animal, which they had then entered into a 4-H livestock competition. None of the youths who sat for him had succeeded in winning an award, despite the obvious care they had given to their animals. The Unchosen Ones depicts the bloom of youth and the mettle of the kids who grow up on farms, reminding us how resilient children can be when confronted with life's inevitable disappointments. The formal qualities of the lighting and setting endow these young people with a gravitas beyond their years, revealing self-directed dedication in some, and in others, perhaps, the pressures of traditions imposed upon them. Kern's beautiful portraits capture a particular America, a rural world, and a time in life when the layered emotions of youth are laid bare. Four years later, in 2020, Kern returned to photograph his young subjects. The most recent photographs show how the children have grown into adolescence or young adulthood: some of them have continued to pursue animal husbandry, while others have developed other interests. It is likely that some of these kids will not choose to continue running their family farms—an unpredictable and demanding way to make a living. These diptychs are punctuated by lush landscapes of the farms that are their homes. As Kern made the second group of photographs, he asked his young subjects what they had carried forward from their previous experience. What were their thoughts, their dreams, and their goals for the future? How would they fit into the future of agricultural America?

This book is for all artists who create animal portraits and paintings in the studio. Do you already have some experience with painting but are just beginning to work on animal subjects? This book gives practical advice to help get you on the right track. As well as providing a good foundation, I show you many ways to improve the design of your paintings. The main focus of the book is the process by which ideas are generated, used to create a design, and taken through to a finished painting. I've drawn on my own experience to show how it's done in the studio of a professional artist. It was conceived and written as a book that can be used to solve problems in your own work, guiding you through the many decisions that must be made during the creative process. Most of the examples given are related to working with oil paints. Although a lot of the discussion about design and painting can be applied to any color medium, it is written with the oil painter in mind.

Welcome to the nation of sheep It is a country both familiar and fantastical, where sheep can be political animals, but more often are fluffy, quirky and as cute as can be. Professional artist Conni Togel has become a shepherdess of sorts, painting her Sheep Incognito series has delighted audiences and art collectors around the world. Along with the paintings, Conni wool gathers, commenting on her work, her life and how she creates her flock of friends. Sheep Incognito is a moving account on the evolution of her sheep. It provides a glimpse into the artist's studio world and the sheep's rather peculiar minds, along with some never before seen drawings, sketches and more than 110 paintings of the Sheep Incognito series. A true treasure trove of Sheep Incognito.

Art photographer Danielle Weil presents 50 exquisite black-and-white portraits of farm animals. Her carefully composed photos enable the reader to look at these animals--cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, goats, horses, and donkeys--with the patience seldom allowed in real life, making it possible to discover the individuality and uniqueness of each one.

This ground-breaking book critically extends the psychological project, seeking to investigate the relations between human and more-than-human worlds against the backdrop of the Anthropocene by emphasising the significance of encounter, interaction and relationships. Interdisciplinary environmental theorist Matthew Adams draws inspiration from a wealth of ideas emerging in human–animal studies, anthrozoology, multi-species ethnography and posthumanism, offering a framing of collective anthropogenic ecological crises to provocatively argue that the Anthropocene is also an invitation – to become conscious of the ways in which human and nonhuman are inextricably connected. Through a series of strange encounters between human and nonhuman worlds, Adams argues for the importance of cultivating attentiveness to the specific and situated ways in which the fates of multiple species are bound together in the Anthropocene. Throughout the book this argument is put into practice, incorporating everything from Pavlov’s dogs, broiler chickens, urban trees, grazing sheep and beached whales, to argue that the Anthropocene can be good to think with, conducive to a seeing ourselves and our place in the world with a renewed sense of connection, responsibility and love. Building on developments in feminist and social theory, anthropology, ecopsychology, environmental psychology, (post)humanities, psychoanalysis and phenomenology, this is fascinating reading for academics and students in the field of critical psychology, environmental psychology, and human–animal studies.