Painted Pages
Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media
Fueling Creativity with Sketchbooks and Mixed Media
More inspirational guide than step-by-step workbook, Painted Pages is about helping you to find your own unique way, in the everyday, to be creative and make art. With specific how-to techniques and creative prompts on using an artist's sketchbook in a new way, these pages provide a gentle push to help you discover and integrate your creative passions through sketchbooks, workspaces, and mixed media. Through beautiful full-color imagery, you’ll learn in each chapter how your collections, scraps, ideas, and doodles can lead directly to, and fuel ideas for, creating individual works of art. Using her own materials and methods as a source of motivation, Sarah Ahearn Bellemare provides an inside look at her personal creative processes, sharing her use of her favorite resources alongside tips and tricks for making art – all the while encouraging you to explore, play, and make mistakes as part of the journey. At the end of each chapter, Sarah takes you to visit the studios and sketchbooks of some of her fellow artists – including Shanna Murray, Christine Chitnis, Stephanie Levy, and others – for behind-the-scenes glances into their creative work. Become inspired to build upon your own artistic style and discover the beauty in everyday life with Painted Pages!
Reviews with the most likes.
While I found the overall quality of the book artwork above average, upon reading the book, I found the content underwhelming. The book and the art seemed to lack conviction of any sort. Most art instruction books either offer prompts to inspire the reader to tackle the challenge with their own techniques or the book offers step-by-step techniques. This book really offered neither. There were projects with a list of materials needed but the actual descriptions were vague at best providing neither specific directions nor inspiration for the reader to go forth in their own direction.
I wanted to like the author's art but by the end of the book, I found the art to also be a little lackluster, having no specific focal point or strong point of view. Much of the work reminded me of Sabrina Ward Harrison but without her vibrancy and passion.
The design and photography of the book is aesthetically appealing and the art is above average for books on art journaling and mixed media but that's not really saying a lot.
I picked this book up in hopes of finding some tips and ideas for staying more consistent with my sketchbook and there were a few good ideas but I suspect that there are many other books available with better content overall.
