The New Creative Artist

Overcome your artist's block and explore what drives you artistically! Artist and teacher Nita Leland shows how to be creative in daily life to develop and strengthen your natural curiosity, flexibility, independence and playfulness--all with the end-goal of creating more inspired, unique personal artwork. Enjoy a variety of fun activities designed to exercise your creative muscle, including how to make an autobiographical collage, creating an idea jar for when you need a random jumpstart, and how to make "dull" subjects more interesting. Learn to push your creative boundaries by trying new methods in dozens of types of media including paper crafts, Japanese brush painting, creative quilting, inventive photography, grown-up finger painting, monotype and more. • 110+ activities that inspire creativity • Artists of all skill levels and mediums can tap into their creativity through exciting techniques and exercises • Inspirational tips and advice for taking creative risks to make more meaningful artistic statements • Inspiring art from 100 contributing fine artists and crafters in every medium coaching readers to creative success

Inside you will find loads of activities and exercises designed to help you unleash your natural creativity. Learn how to make creative thinking an integral part of your life. The author explores the myth that is takes "talent" to be an artist. Discover that you have enormous reserves of untapped sources of creativity waiting to be released. Channel these sources into exciting works of art.

"With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — The Artist’s Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it."—The New York Times "Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential"—Vogue Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.

During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the production of America's consumer culture was centralized in midtown Manhattan to an extent unparalleled in the history of the modern United States. Within a few square miles of skyscrapers were the headquarters of networks like NBC and CBS, the editorial offices of book publishers and mass circulation magazines such as Time and Life, numerous influential newspapers, and major advertising agencies on Madison Avenue. Every day tens of thousands of writers, editors, artists, performers, technicians, secretaries, and other white-collar workers made advertisements, produced media content, and enhanced the appearance of goods in order to boost sales. While this center of creativity has often been portrayed as a smoothly running machine, within these offices many white-collar workers challenged the managers and executives who directed their labors. In this definitive history, The Making of the American Creative Class examines these workers and their industries throughout the twentieth century. As manufacturers and retailers competed to attract consumers' attention, their advertising expenditures financed the growth of enterprises engaged in the production of culture, which in turn provided employment for an increasing number of clerical, technical, professional, and creative workers. The book explores employees' efforts to improve their working conditions by forming unions, experimenting with alternative media and cultural endeavors supported by public, labor, or cooperative patronage, and expanding their opportunities for creative autonomy. As blacklisting and attacks on militant unions left them destroyed or weakened, workers in advertising, design, publishing, and broadcasting in the late twentieth century were constrained in their ability to respond to economic dislocations and to combat discrimination in the culture industries. At once a portrait of a city and the national culture of consumer capitalism it has produced, The Making of the American Creative Class is an innovative narrative of modern American history that addresses issues of earnings and status still experienced by today's culture workers.

A moving portrait of a father and daughter relationship and a case for late-stage creativity from Emily Urquhart, the bestselling author of Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes. “The fundamental misunderstanding of our time is that we belong to one age group or another. We all grow old. There is no us and them. There was only ever an us.” — from The Age of Creativity It has long been thought that artistic output declines in old age. When Emily Urquhart and her family celebrated the eightieth birthday of her father, the illustrious painter Tony Urquhart, she found it remarkable that, although his pace had slowed, he was continuing his daily art practice of drawing, painting, and constructing large-scale sculptures, and was even innovating his style. Was he defying the odds, or is it possible that some assumptions about the elderly are flat-out wrong? After all, many well-known visual artists completed their best work in the last decade of their lives, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne among them. With the eye of a memoirist and the curiosity of a journalist, Urquhart began an investigation into late-stage creativity, asking: Is it possible that our best work is ahead of us? Is there an expiry date on creativity? Do we ever really know when we’ve done anything for the last time? The Age of Creativity is a graceful, intimate blend of research on ageing and creativity, including on progressive senior-led organizations, such as a home for elderly theatre performers and a gallery in New York City that only represents artists over sixty, and her experiences living and travelling with her father. Emily Urquhart reveals how creative work, both amateur and professional, sustains people in the third act of their lives, and tells a new story about the possibilities of elder-hood.

An artist's unique voice is their calling card. It's what makes each of their works vital and particular. But developing such singular artistry requires effort and persistence. Bestselling author, artist, and illustrator Lisa Congdon brings her expertise to this guide to the process of artistic self-discovery. Featuring advice from Congdon herself and interviews with a roster of established artists, illustrators, and creatives, this one-of-a-kind book will show readers how to identify and nurture their own visual identity, navigate the influence of artists they admire, push through fear and insecurity, and appreciate the value of their personal journey.

Think Like an Artist by BBC Arts editor Will Gompertz - wisdom and smart thinking from Da Vinci to Ai Weiwei Why do some people seem to find it easy to come up with brilliant, fresh ideas? And how do they turn them into something worthwhile? Will Gompertz, the BBC's Arts Editor and a former director at the Tate, has spent years getting up close and personal with some of the world's greatest creative thinkers. And he's discovered a handful of traits that are common to all successful people, from novelists and film directors to scientists and philosophers. These basic practices allow their talent to flourish. And they can be adopted by all of us - no matter what we do in life - to unleash our own latent creativity and help us achieve extraordinary things. It's time to Think Like An Artist. 'Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had' Guardian As the BBC's Arts Editor, Will Gompertz has interviewed and observed many of the world's leading artists, directors, novelists, musicians, actors and designers. Creativity Magazine in New York ranked him as one of the 50 most original thinkers in the world. He is the author of the international bestselling art history book What Are You Looking At? which has been published in over 15 languages.

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