The pictures above are just two images from an entire gallery of “spiral photo art”. The rest of the gallery can be viewed here – and I’d encourage people to check it out because the overall effect of the images together is significantly more striking than the solo pictures are on their own.
Here are some of the reasons that I find this gallery of art photos inspiring:
- It reveals many different ways to look at one thing. One of the things that writers do to challenge themselves is to practice writing prompts which often include exercises that require them to look at a topic in a new way. A writer can pick one theme or one idea and write about it using an endless array of approaches and styles. This is a visual example of how to do that exact same thing. One great writing exercise would be to take two of these pictures and write out a description of their similarities and differences with enough detail to make your reader capable of visualizing the images without being able to actually see them.
- Each individual image is striking. It’s something that you can just immerse yourself into gazing at and looking into and getting lost in. The kind of images that grab your attention and demand that you look at them are the kind of images that are really inspiring.
- The image itself could be a starting point to another art project. Scrapbooking and collages are both kinds of art that start with images and work outwards. Doing a lot of collage art myself, I’m always looking for images that make me think I might want to further develop them. Many of these spirals could be the background starting point to developing a collage project.
Question of the Day: What is the first thing that comes to mind when viewing either of the above photos?
*Inspired! is a daily Real Worlds column which reveals a wide range of things that might inspire a writer on a daily basis.
[Tags] inspiration, creativity, art, spiral, photographs, images, writing [/Tags]
As a I mentioned in a recent post, I’ve been rediscovering the art of altered books. These are turning out to be an ongoing source of inspiration to me in a number of different ways. These ways include:
- Seeing objects in a new light. I noticed the other day that the junk mail I had sitting in my recyle can was filled with colorful and decorative words that might go well in a page of an altered book. I pulled it out and started clipping. I also noticed that a pile of clothes planned for giveaway could be used as the fabric for book covers.
- Redesigning my creative space. Since I’m starting to save more things to be used in making altered book art, I’ve realized that I’d like to have my various art and writing materials more organized and accessible. This is something I’d always planned on as a kid when I dreamed of having my own art studio. I have the space now to make that a reality so I’m starting to work on it, slowly but surely.
- Writing inspiration. Visual art always helps me bring out themes for writing and that’s been even truer as I’ve explored the idea of putting one theme together on a page in collage form.
- Reading material. I’ve been reading a lot of altered art books lately and reading about art is always a source of new inspiration. Some books on altered art that you may want to pick up yourself include:
- Mixed Emulsions: Altered Art Techniques for Photographic Imagery
Altered Books, Collaborative Journals, and Other Adventures in Bookmaking
- The Altered Book Scrapbook
- Altered Books Workshop: 18 Creative Techniques for Self-Expression
- New Directions in Altered Books
- Altered Book Collage
- #5167 Altered Books 101
I’m currently playing around with my first altered book project. I went to the bookstore with a goal of finding a book for less than $5 to use as my starting point. The one I found is a small square book on Greek mythology. I’m playing around with methods of altering it and just kind of playing around with being creative. The book is going to be about the emotions and flaws that make up the heroes of mythology and the heroes of our own daily lives … and that theme turned out to be something that I pulled together in a recent short essay on fathers as heroes.
Question of the Day: What altered book artists can you recommend as a source of inspiration?
[Tags] altered, art, book, creativity, projects, craft, inspiration [/Tags]
The image above is hard to see clearly because of the size but it’s something that I found really insiring and I think the image gives you the gist of what caught my eye. This is a page taken out of the magazine Batanga, a Latino music and entertainment magazine that I recommend checking out. It’s one of several pages which showed the type of fashion style that define certain music genres.
Here’s what caught my eye:
-
The really simple black sketches that are remniscent of older magazines rather than new ones.
-
The yellow background that is almost like the color of parchment paper.
-
The cohesion with which one style is pulled together and summarized by these simple sketches.
This is going into my “inspiration resource” scrapbook as something that I’d like to partially emulate in some sort of future art work. I would like to be able to reduce a style or an idea down to one cohesive page of simple drawings and to take that style and rework it into something that looks like it came from another era. Whether this turns into a piece of art or just the simple structure to remind me what a story is supposed to be about, I think it could be a great way to tear an idea down to its essence.
Note: This post is part of daily column called Inspired! Learn more here.
Question of the Day: What is the first thing that comes to mind as you see this image?
[Tags] latino, batanga, inspiration, entertainment, creativity, art, music [/Tags]
I am currently in the process of reading Creativity for Life: Practical Advice on the Artist’s Personality, and Career from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach
- Artful Living. This describes the act of trying to infuse artistic creativity into everything you do. It’s about being creative in the way that you parent, in the re-using that you do to recycle items around the home, in the meals that you make for yourself and others. It’s about taking each moment of the day and trying to approach it with your own creative vision at its core. (Another great book specifically about this is Living Artfully: Create the Life You Imagine.)
- Art-Filled Living. This refers to the way that we try to fill our days with art. We visit bookstores and art galleries, we play music in our homes and attend concerts when we can, we watch fashion shows on television in order to be creatively inspired. These are the ways that we bring art into our every day life in order to be able to see the world with a broader creative perspective. This is of utmost important to developing creativity because without constantly refilling our own creative wells, our sources of inspiration may run dry.
- An Art-Committed Life. This is what the bulk of Maisel’s book is about and it refers to the life that we live once we have chosen to actually make art as a living for what we hope will be the rest of our lives. It is about art as a way of life and not just a part of life.
We may find that all three artistic ways of living apply to us. We may find that only one is really a part of our lives on a regular basis. And we may find that although we have one of these in life, we aren’t embodying the other as much as we would like. (For example, you may bring a lot of art into your life but not approach life as creatively as you would like so you have an art-filled life but not an artful one.) By examining these different methods of filling our lives with art, we can make wiser choices in how artfully we want to spend our days.
Question of the Day: Which of these art lives is most important?
[Tags] art, creativity, inspiration, artful, living, choices [/Tags]
I stumbled upon Brazilian artist Icaro Doria quite literally by using the StumbleUpon toolbar that I have intalled on my computer. Stumbling is something that I occasionally do just to find something new that inspires me. In this instance, I was successful. Icaro Doria’s series of artistic flags uses colors, proportions and statistical information to convey facts about the socio-political environment of different countries and causes. I haven’t ever seen anything quite like this is which is why it stands out as something to be noticed.
Doria uses really simple images to display really complex ideas. He touches on a range of different socio-political topics including HIV, education, drug use, oil consumption and other types of things that affect the global landscape. Breaking these down into really simple images makes it possible for us to just look at the flag and think “wow”. You could get lost in trying to break down the meaning that each image makes about the world around you.
I’m not sure if this is something that I’ll ever use in my own work or not. I keep a scrapbook filled with images of things that have inspired me which I go back to again and again to draw from as a resource for art and writing. I’ve included one of the flags in that book in the hopes that I’ll find something to do with it in the future. Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t but I’ll enjoy the artwork again and again every time that I see it.
Question of the Day: Can you think of any artist doing work similar to Doria’s flags?
Find Icaro Doria’s work on Centripetal Notion, One Club and Technorati
[Tags] Icaro Doria, flags, art, creativity, stumble [/Tags]
Writers need to explore visual creativity. Or maybe that’s not true of all writers but it’s certainly true for me. There are just times when the words get to be too much; times when I can’t think straight because there are just too many words and word choices and ideas expressed in language. When it gets to be that way, I turn to visual art. Sometimes I play around with it myself as a means of new expression. And sometimes I just observe it and enjoy it and try not to think about it in words.
Collage art has always been my favorite form of visual art in terms of how I like to creatively express myself. I like the cutting and pasting of different images to create something new. It seems to translate to what we do regularly as writers; we recraft the same themes in different ways so that they look new and make more sense and strike us differently. And collage art can also be meditative – taking apart, reassembling, shaping, changing …
In playing with collage art over the past few days, I rediscovered the art of the altered book. I had explored altered book art a few years ago because several friends left over from me penpalling days had started to get into making this kind of art. For those who don’t know, it’s the taking apart and changing of books. Sometimes the artists merely paints the pages of the book or collages over them. Other times, the book is cut or burned and reshaped into a new design. Many times, found objects become part of the collaged piece; it starts with a book as three dimensional canvas and becomes a work of art.
At the time, I didn’t get into doing this type of collage myself. For one thing, I had something of an inhibition about tearing up books. Sure, it was re-using them and re-purposing them and that’s fine. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to deface the books I owned. And I also was exploring photocollages at the time and felt that’s where my own artistic inclinations were best expressed. However, I’m seeking something new these days for creative expression and think that altered books might be a good step forward for me.
I have a bunch of books that I’m done with. They aren’t worth keeping around and they have no monetary value for resale. They aren’t in good enough condition to give them as gifts. And I don’t believe in just throwing books away. So perhaps trying my hand at some altered book art is a good choice right now. More importantly, I’ve recently discovered a new type of altered book art that I hadn’t seen previously. It’s called “found poetry”.
The artist chooses words on the page of the book to create a poem. The other words on the page are scratched out or painted over or collaged on top of. The poetry words stand out amidst an artistic creation. I’ve always loved the pairing of poetry with images. I’ve always liked collages that incorporated text. And I enjoy the idea of using words already on a page to create something that reads entirely differently than the original author intended. It’s an interesting creative challenge and one that I think can be used to open up new channels of thinking, a means of allowing new creative ideas to flourish.
Question of the Day: What experiences with altered book art can you share?
Related links: Altered Books by Judi Riesch, Karen’s Whimsy Altered Books, The Importance of Collage Art, Altered Book Artists
[Tags] altered book, art, creativity, writing, collage, books [/Tags]
Support me with Flattr!
