The New Creative Artist
A Guide to Developing Your Creative Spirit
By Nita Leland
Spiralbound Hardcover, 176 pages, Copyright ©2006
North Light Books

Books about specific art techniques are important and necessary, especially for newcomers to a particular medium. Sometimes, though, you don't need more training in technique, what you really need is a little inspiration, a new way of approaching a familiar subject, or a creative nudge to get you out of an artistic rut. That's the kind of book The New Creative Artist is. It's the creative well you can draw from when your own is coming up dry.

This revised, updated version of Nita Leland's original 1993 work includes 50 percent new material with more than 60 fantastic activities for achieving greater creativity. Leland is an encouraging guide. She insists that all of us are creative, if we choose to be. In the book's introduction, she writes, "Creativity isn't magic. It's achievable. So don't wait for a bolt from the blue. Find out what works for you; then get going." And her book gives you plenty of ideas for getting going.

The book is organized into 8 chapters addressing broad subjects: creativity, art and craft, drawing, design, realism, abstraction, experimentation and adventure. Throughout these chapters, filled with thought-provoking quotes and Leland's own insightful prose, the creative activity ideas visually stand out as notes and memos "tacked" to the page. The activities are not step-by-step projects, but brief suggestions for implementing the concepts Leland introduces. For instance, in the chapter on "Design Principle," Leland discusses the importance of rhythm to design. The corresponding activity invites readers to portray the rhythms of music in a drawing or painting.

The book need not be approached linearly, although Leland's thoughts do follow a natural progression with ideas building on one another. Readers in need of a creative jumpstart can easily delve into any page, latch on to an idea and just begin creating. For this reason, the book is a ready source of ideas for art teachers needing either short classroom activities or longer projects to engage their students.

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