Wrap-up of the Creativity Reading Challenge

I read 6 books for the Creativity Reading Challenge. They include the following:

• Painting Light with Colored Pencils

• Drawing Comics

• Drawing Birds with Colored Pencils

• Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencils

• The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook

• The Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches

Usually in a wrap-up post I pick my top books and least favorite book. With this group of books that is impossible. All of them were fabulous.  Probably the one I keep pulling from the bookshelf most often is the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. It is like an encyclopedia for those who spin fiber into yarn. I seem to need the information contained within its pages more often than the others.

This was a successful challenge.  I am looking forward to participating in the challenge in 2020 with a few weaving books. I am a beginning weaver.  

Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches

Carole Samples' book is the go-to guide for crazy quilters seeking new stitches and stitch combinations for their quilts.

I had been doing crazy quilting for a few years when I first learned about Carole Samples out of print book. All of my crazy quilting education came from blogs at that time and 3 years into my crazy quilting experience one blog post mentioned this book as having every stitch and stitch combination imaginable within its pages.  I found a copy and was amazed at what I found inside.

This book is very different from other crazy quilting instruction books. It does not have stitch instructions or pretty pictures to get inspired by. What it does have is quite helpful for the intermediate or advanced crazy quilter who is looking to expand her stitch repertoire.  The book shows every stitch on black and white pages by stitch category, ie, single stitch, fan stitch, holbein, comb, alphabet, T, triangle, geometric, cross stitch, stem stitch, star, herringbone, arrowhead, chevron, fern, zig zag, fishbone, satin stitch, blanket, buttonhole, feather, cretan, and chain stitch. The book then shows numerous examples of stitch combinations.  When the title says the book is a "treasury of stitches" it is telling the truth!

If you want to advance in your crazy quilting craft then you need this book to help you see new ways of doing common stitches.  It helps you to be creative in your embroidery on your crazy quilt top.

I would rate this book 10 of of 5 stars! That is how fantastic it is. As I said above, this book is out of print. However, you can still find it on Amazon as well as Ebay.  It is a must have for the crazy quilter.

The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook

Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius began writing the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook after the United Nations declared that 2009 would be the International Year of Natural Fibers. The declaration was an environmental one as the process of producing synthetic fibers released harmful compounds into the air. The result was smog and many health problems for people who lived near the areas where they were produced.  The book was published in 2011.

As a person who spins fiber into yarn, having a book with information on 200 different sheep and other animals is quite resourceful to have on my bookshelf. The hair, or fiber, that is shorn from each type of animal has different characteristics and may need to be spun a certain way.  A spinner may need to purchase more fiber from a particular species to complete a project than from another species. Having all this information at your fingertips helps in making purchasing decisions.

When an animal can be grouped into a category, it is.  For example, there is the Cheviot Family of sheep, a Down Family, English Longwool Family, Merino Family and others.  Goats, camelids, bison, yak, rabbits and musk ox are also covered. Note that a camelid can be an alpaca, llama, guanaco, vicuna, or camel.

For each sheep/animal there is a description of its traits, facts on its fleece weight, length, diameter, lock characteristics and natural colors. There is also information on how to prepare it for spinning, how well it takes dyes, and the types of garments it is best suited for. In addition, there is a full color page showing the fiber in various forms.

You can see with all this information at hand, the spinner or weaver basically has a goof proof guide to selecting the best fiber for a project.

This is a must read for all spinners! 

Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencils

I came across Ann Swan's YouTube channel earlier this week and was pleased to find a botanical artist who only uses colored pencil in her botanical drawings. Usually colored pencil is only used as a final highlight after pen, ink and watercolor have been used. I immediately ordered her book from Amazon and it arrived yesterday.

This book is not for beginners.  The author assumes that you know how to draw as well as how to use colored pencils.  You need to be a high achieving intermediate colored pencil artist or an advanced one before taking on botanicals. The first thing the author teaches the reader is the need to know the scientific structure of the plant that you are drawing. How does it grow? How is it constructed? How are the leaves on the stem arranged? You need to study the pattern of the veins on the leaves, all of them, as no two leaves are alike. In addition, the artist needs to study the life cycle of the plant, making measurements of each part of the plant as it changes.  It seems like the artist needs to buy a botany book on the plant before getting started as there is so much scientific information needed before you can start your drawing.

The author recommends using a small sketchbook to record details about the plant's growing habits as well as making a series a thumbnail sketches of the flowers, stems, roots, leaves, and buds.  She also recommends taking a series of photographs to use as a reference for your drawing.

One fact I learned is that botanical paintings are always lifesize. That was why you needed to take measurements of the plant in the planning stages of your drawing. Also, Ms. Swan shows the reader how to use the Divine Proportion, which occurs in nature everywhere, when planning the composition of the drawing so that it is aesthetically pleasing. I also learned that there are 3 styles in botanical illustration. There is the traditional style which was the only style I was aware of, the contemporary style where the focus is on just one part of the plant and the abstract style where one part of a plant is enlarged and it's the only part of the plant that is drawn.

The author also includes great tips on which colors to use when shading leaves in the foreground versus shading them in the background as well as how to develop a critical eye toward the style and elements in your drawing.

The latter half if the book consists of how-to demonstrations of various plant subjects.  Ms. Swan primarily uses Polychromos pencils but will also use Prismacolor and Luminance pencils for blending. I was surprised that she didn't use the Luminance pencils more often since they are 100% lightfast but the colors they come in are not suited for botanicals. In fact, they are not very vibrant for other types of drawings and I wish Caran d'Ache would create more colors for us.

Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencils is a wonderful addition to the colored pencil instruction books. It is quite unique from the rest since botanical art requires a different skillset.

This book is a must-read.

Drawing Birds with Colored Pencil

Kaaren Poole's Drawing Birds is a beginner's guide to drawing birds with colored pencils.  However, more advanced colored pencil users may be able to pick up a few tips from her too.  I know I did.

Ms. Poole begins her book with the usual beginner information on supplies, creating a sketch, how to transfer it to the paper you will be using and color theory.  However, she has a section on bird shapes and anatomy that I think is unique in colored pencil instruction books. Anatomy is a subject that I have neglected in my own drawings and perhaps I need to study it.

The skeletal structure of humans has always been taught in the classes I took in art school when we were learning how to draw the human form in various poses.  It makes sense that when you are drawing a bird or other animal you need to first draw its skeleton and then smooth out your lines to the shapes that your eyes actually see of the creature.

The author moves on from there to the anatomy of the eyes and beaks and shows how to correctly position them. The tip regarding the eyes is going to help me tremendously with my drawings. Now that I see how she does them I can see that my drawings fall flat because of the eyes.

The bulk of the book consists of step-by-step demonstrations of various birds. These demonstrations are quite detailed and even include the type of pencil to use as well as the color to use and in what order.  There is an emphasis on layering.  The author layers color over three times and her instructions tell the reader exactly how to do that.

Drawing Birds with Colored Pencil is a great resource for the artist.  I definitely rate it 5 out of 5 stars.

Drawing Comics

Robyn Chapman's Drawing Comics is a beginner's guide to getting started in comics.  The book covers each step you need to take to get a finished comic book.

The initial exercises are on drawing.  However, most of the exercises in the book are on character development and storytelling. The layout of each of the 52 exercises is the genius of the book.  Each exercise is encompassed in a 2 page spread. One page has a small box with a materials list, another box with an inspirational quote, and a photograph. The second page consists of a half page set of instructions for the exercise and a half page of tips from a cartoonist. The layout makes each step look easy to accomplish so the reader can feel relaxed about the process.

Some of the other exercises include page building, panels, lettering, inking, publishing pages at home and writing proposals for publishers. If you do all of the exercises you should have a comic strip at the end of the book.

Drawing Comics is a book for the absolute beginning cartoonist. The instructions are so well laid out that anyone should have a product at the end of the book if they do each exercise before reading the next exercise. No other comic instructional guide makes writing comics this simple nor do you have a comic strip done at the end of the book.

Simply the best comic instructional guidebook!  5 out of 5 stars!

Painting Light with Colored Pencil

Cecile Baird's Painting Light with Colored Pencil is chock full of inspiration and instruction in its 128 pages.  After an introduction to composition and lighting the author delves into instructing the reader on how to create fruit and flowers that glow. She then spends a chapter on how to capture light on water.  The final chapters have 7 step-by-step demonstrations on how to use the techniques she discussed in the earlier chapters.

The author has the easiest teaching on how to produce light in your colored pencil paintings that I have ever seen in any colored pencil instruction book. However, she shows you how to do it in step-by-step instructions with Prismacolor pencils which I no longer use.

Prismacolor was sold to a company based in Mexico 5 to 10 years ago and quality control was eliminated.  The pencil casings were made thinner and with cheaper wood. The pigments are still the best but when they are encased in a wood pencil that breaks too easily that you need to replace them 4 or 5 times they are not worth the trouble or extra expense.  If you are not an experienced colored pencil artist you may find it difficult to substitute pencils from better brands that will get you the same results.

One thing the author gets right is adding in demonstrations on working with metal, glass, wood, and in draping fabric. These topics are usually in separate books or dvds and here we are lucky to have them all in one place which is a great value for the reader.

One new skill I will take away from this book is how to create fabric folds.  This will be useful in portraits as well as in still lifes that have fabric in them.

4 out of 5 stars!

2019 Creativity Reading Challenge

I am going to rejoin this reading challenge again next year.  While I expected to read more books for this challenge in 2018 than I have, I think I can do better next year by concentrating more on the art and crafts that I do the most: spinning fiber into yarn and colored pencil drawings. I still may post a review of a typography book and a cookbook next month but I am pretty much done with this challenge for 2018.