Product Description

This title for both beginning and experienced artists gives readers ideas for building an art habit. It contains daily projects for drawing, watercolour, mixed media, collage and more. It aims to help readers increase their skill and creativity and find time to make a little bit of art every day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98894 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 128 pages

Customer Reviews

A book that delivers
A wealth of ideas beautifully and lovingly presented. It is full of easy-to-create, yet original and fun tips for quick art projects. Everything is explained in simple clear words, her language is upbeat and sparkling with enthusiasm. The idea of creating "thumbnail sketches" and small format paintings is an excellent way of bypassing any blocks which result from intimidation before a "big project", whether that is caused by dreading the time such a project would take, or the fear of wasting color and paper when one doesn't know if there'd be any results. The projects can be regarded as "small studies", "experiments", as "a moment of playing around with something artistic".

The projects cover a variety of styles and themes, from realistic sketches with some very helpful and easy-to-follow tips on perspective, to semi-abstracts, to abstracts, to collages, to playing around with photocopies to create original works of art. I found her division of "color triads" to four types and the range of colors they can produce when mixed to be very helpful in understanding the moods of certain paintings and how to create them. They also inspire you to experiment with creating your own color triads (hence, a certain range in your palette) to bestow a certain character/light/mood on your own paintings.

Not only are these ideas a way to make "takeaway art" in your busy life and keep you well nourished while you're on the run, but some of the results of these projects could easily inspire you to a larger piece of work which you will want to find time for. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to get art back into their lives despite the lack of time!

Inspirational AND Practical
One of the first things this book suggests is how to help yourself be more portable - it gives explicit directions on how to make your own portfolio (to hold sketchbook, palette, etc). Plus 3 different tool kits (drawing, collage and watercolour). The idea is simple and so useful.

I love the fact that this book is spiral bound - this allows the pages to be laid flat whilst referring to the book - useful when making up the above project for instance.

I've very drawn to the artist's paintings - if you like the cover of the book for once that is a reasonable guide.

There are also many ideas for what to do in your sketchbook - she suggests just opening the book and having a go at one of her exercises.

Make making art everyday a habit, even if its just 30 minutes a day.

Inspiration
A wonderful book, highly inspirational.
Many excellent ideas, attitudes, and drills for taking creativity less seriously, and get more out of it, be more productive.