Books I Love

                                    Vera, The Art and Life of An Icon by Susan Seid.

Vera Neumann, prolific American artist and entrepreneur, designed everything from wallpaper, bedding to dresses, blouses and her signature scarves.  She was best known for her boldly, colored linen patterns and scarves signed "Vera" and featuring a ladybug. All her merchandise were based on her original artworks which typically featured painterly florals or imagery based on her travels. She averaged 500 paintings a year -truly impressive. I loved looking through this book -it's given me inspiration and ideas on which I can work from.

Books I Love

I recently read this book by Brene Brown called The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.  One of the sections is about how to cultivate creativity. She states that everyone is creative -it's whether you use it or not. So simple yet so true. And creativity comes in all shapes and forms -there is no one particular way of being "creative."

Books I love: Drawing from the City

I bought this beautiful handmade art book for Dh's birthday. It is called Drawing from the City by Tejubehan. If you want to view more pages, go here.
The book is truly exquisite! I love the fact it's all in black and white and the story is about the writer's life rising from an impoverished childhood in Mumbai to adulthood marrying her husband, who is also her creative partner. Pretty cool!

Books That I Liked

Last week, I was thinking that I needed to read more books that would help me creatively and light a fire up my you know where. I found this book called "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Kleon. I loved it! He had a list of 10 points on how to get your creative juices going. I would highly recommend this book.

Go here for his website.

Books I Love

Painting by John Currin



I came across this book about contemporary portrait painting. It is a fantastic book full of wonderful artist interpretations of portraits.

It is called Painting People by Charlotte Mullins.

Flow

Over the many years, in the midst of my creative block, I would try and find books that would help me to unblock. One of the books I loved was called "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Csikszentmihalyi defines "Flow" as moments of self-forgetfulness when we are totally absorbed in the process of life.

Wouldn't it be lovely to be in the flow of life/creative process all the time?

Damn It! Just Draw!

I know I don't draw nearly enough as I would like to. One of my goals this year was to draw for 15 minutes every day and that I had hoped eventually that it would just be incorporated into my every day life. It is not happening as yet.

One of the best and inspiring books about involving drawing into your daily routine is a book called "Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission To be the Artist You Truly Are" by Danny Gregory.

He also has blog. Here is the link:

http://dannygregory.com/

Unleashing Your Artist

One of the first books which I loved and which would finally lead me on my way was "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. I did most of the exercises and to this day, still write 3 pages a day in my journal. It is an excellent book and very inspirational.

Here is a link to her blog:

The Artists Way by Julia Child