Great creative inspiration | Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art

Reassuring for those who journal, inspiring for those who want to. | Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art | Jennifer New

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	• Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art Jennifer New Princeton Architectural Press, 2005 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great for all kinds of creative expression!

I love this book, and it repeatedly finds its way into my bag to be taken out and thumbed through on the bus, on vacation, at work during breaks or while I am on the couch during those rare few minutes of "me-time". It takes the idea of "journal" and makes it multi-faceted. You see the artistic side of journaling of course, but the author proposes the idea that a scientific journal or furniture designer sketchbook is just as artistic as the watercolor journal. It really takes away the fear that just because you can't draw or have no idea how to collage you can't create a meaningful journal.
This isn't a "how-to", it's a "just-is". If you are looking for a book to teach you visual journaling techniques, this probably isn't the book for you. But if you like to see how others journal in a way that fits their lives, you will enjoy this book.

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Great creative inspiration

I saw this book in a local bookstore and knew I had to have it- I found it here on Amazon for much cheaper. I love the illustrations and variety of styles represented. As a high school art teacher, I occasionally use this book to help students spark ideas for their personal art journals. Great book for anyone seeking visual inspiration.

Reassuring for those who journal, inspiring for those who want to.

I am a visual artist and have always been fascinated with the concept of journaling. This book helped me understand that there's no wrong way to keep a journal (for those of you who tend to think your journal isn't as interesting as other peoples, or that you're "not doing it right", this book is a confidence booster). Journaling is often personal and it's easy to feel self conscious of ones journal while in a vacuum; going through this book and seeing the stories and examples of total strangers helped me not be so critical of myself. I very much enjoyed the examples of each persons journal, especially the handwritten ones; the image quality was so good you could read the entries clearly. It's fun looking through other peoples journals, but confusing if you don't have the person there to explain things...this book includes how the journal writer works, why they do it, and how it has benefited other aspects of their career and/or life.

I was impressed that the majority of the people featured in the book weren't career artists; some were naturalists, psychiatrists, mothers, and college students (to name a few). I liked that there was a wide spectrum of individuals featured in the book.

It also shows that there are a variety of ways to keep a journal and that it doesn't always have to be a "Dear Diary" kind of scenario. It was also interesting to see what people used for journals and how they incorporated other media such as collage, digital photography, etc. or how journaling led to other forms of creation.

As other reviewers have mentioned this is not a book of journaling techniques. However, I found it inspiring to see the different kinds of journals people keep and it's given me ideas of my own to run with.

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Great source of inspiration

I really like this book and it is one of my favorites, one I will return to again and again when I need a little creativity kick start.
As a mixed media artist who writes/draws in a journal daily, I really enjoy getting a peek at what other people are doing in their journals and how they work things out on paper,what inspires them or drives them as the case may be.
If you are looking for a "how to" book then this is not the book for you, there are plenty of fine books in that specific area of interest.
I like it because it is unique and real,not trendy or cute, or edgy, it's just a wonderful compilation of other people's journal pages.

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Inspiration journaling....

"The impulse to record our daily lives on paper is nothing if not universal." This quote is on the back cover of Drawing from Life. We aren't told who said it but the idea doesn't suffer for the lack. Teacher/author Jennifer New has compiled an exceedingly rich volume of journal pages and managed to include something that will appeal to everyone.

My particular favorite piece of Drawing from Life is the fourth chapter -"Creation." Architect Steven Holl refers to the sketches and paintings that litter his twenty years of journaling as "seed-germs" Filmmaker Mike Figgis says of his diary, "It's the only truly frank conversation I can ever have." The most relevant message for me, however, originated in a lecture by poststructuralist John Dewey who argued that, "the value of art is not as a relic, a museum piece to be admired from afar, but as an aesthetic experience."(152). I emphasize this quote because it seems the most powerful part of the idea. Art should have a "verb" identity. Rather than embodying the passivity of a noun, art demands action. There isn't a way to avoid interaction with it - no matter your like or dislike of the piece you are observing. That this observation changes the observer is a critical point and can be pushed farther, as social psychologists have done, by insisting that observation changes the observed as well. The significance and meaning of a piece is transformed by every person who sees it; it's voice is strengthened, weakened, done away with, glorified, altered irreparably in a kind of mobius strip of creation. All these changes create changes in a timeless loop of inquiry and understanding and thereby creating past, present and future lives for the artwork. Figgis and Holl's comments on journaling reveal the kinesiological mechanisms of art - the creative movement of body, mind and spirit from which it springs.

I don't know if there is an innate compulsion to record our lives. I don't think its outside the realm of possibility but I have to wonder whether it's the journal or the subsequent creation of witnesses to our lives that matters most to us. I don't think everyone chooses words as a tool for documenting their existence and I don't believe that everyone who wants to do so leaves behind a material representation of their lives. Those who do, however, probably find that having a witness to their lives provides a more tangible rest at the end of things. Jennifer New has produced a book filled with pages of beauty and experience and we, as readers and artists, are allowed to witness art as verb through different eyes.

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Who hasn't, at one time or other, kept a journal? The impulse to record our daily lives on paper is nothing if not universal. Still, only a few of us have the discipline to make it past the first few entries, and fewer still manage to create diaries whose insight and visual beauty can inspire anyone but their authors. Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art is an exploration of these exceptions books of obsessive wonder filled to their borders with drawings, sketches, watercolors, graphs, charts, lists, collages, portraits, and photographs.

Jennifer New takes readers on a spirited tour into the private worlds of journal keepers an architect, a traveler, a film director, an archeologist, a cancer patient, a songwriter, a quiltmaker, a gardener, an artist, a cyclist, and a scientist, to name just a few illustrating a broad range of journaling styles and techniques that in the end show how each of us can go about documenting our everyday lives. Excerpts from journals by such artists as Maira Kalman, Steven Holl, David Byrne, and Mike Figgis give us a peek at how creative souls observe, reflect, and explore.

For those who already keep a journal, Drawing from Life will be an inspiration. For those who have always wanted to or tried and failed it might just be the motivation needed to get past that first week.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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