Archive for the 'Creativity' Category

The World Through Blunted Sight

Published on April 11, 2013 in Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Patrick Trevor-Roper.

The World Through Blunted Sight
Patrick Trevor-Roper

978 0285 63397 1
Format PB
£14.99

Sight is the most highly developed of all the human senses, the one by which we primarily function. How, then, are our personalities, our creativity and style, affected when faulty or failing eye sight forces us to rely more on the ‘older’ senses of smell, touch, hearing and intuition?

This classic work, first published in 1970 and thoroughly revised in 1988, combines the author’s professional knowledge of ophthalmology with his deep and wide-ranging familiarity with art and literature, to present a fascinating study of the work of painters, sculptors, poets and prose writers throughout history.

Was Impressionism born of a generation of short-sighted artists? Was Constable’s fondness for autumnal tints due to colour blindness? Did Modigliani actually see his nudes as unnaturally elongated through distorted sight? Leonardo, Rembrandt and Titian all suffered from increasing long-sightedness in old age – is this the cause of the loss of detail in their later paintings?

Entertainingly written, impressively broad in scope and lavishly illustrated in colour and black and white, this unique book remains essential reading for all who seek to probe beneath the surface of artistic expression to unravel the workings of the creative mind.

Patrick Trevor-Roper has had a distinguished career in ophthalmology and has written the standard work on the subject. A former President of the Opthalmic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, in 1977 he received the Society’s first De Lancey Award ‘for furtherance of the link between art and medicine’.

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The Van Gogh File

Published on April 11, 2013 in Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Ken Wilkie.

The Van Gogh File
Ken Wilkie

978 0285 64110 5
Format EB
£5.99

Incorporating recent discoveries about Vincent Van Gogh’s life and work, including the only photograph of him as an adult, this updated biography investigates the creativity, successes, and frustrations of one of the world’s most famous painters. With evidence accumulated from Van Gogh’s European life, from Belgium, the Netherlands, England, and France, this illuminating account reveals sources of his unhappiness, terrible childhood illnesses, personal relationships, and even introduces his possible grandchildren. Fully illustrated with more than 70 photographs and art reproductions, these new facts show the seeds of Van Gogh’s inspiration and shine light on one of the most enigmatic figures of 19th-century art. Ken Wilkie has followed van Gogh’s trail around Europe for thirty years.

Along the way Ken Wilkie has discovered the identity of Van Gogh’s first love in London and the house they shared together in Brixton and uncovered evidence of the disease that led to the deaths of both Vincent and Theo Van Gogh. Following his journalist’s nose Ken Wilkie finds a trail of clues Van Gogh left behind, which prompts his many adventures, fortunate meetings and accidental discoveries. Ken Wilkie gets as close to Van Gogh’s presence as it is possible, from meeting his nephew who grew up sleeping in a bed that had Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings piled underneath to meeting the widow of a man who shared a flat with the Van Gogh brothers in Paris. Through meeting those whose lives have intersected with Van Gogh’s we meet Vincent Van Gogh the man and artist, freed from the myths that have been created around him.

Wilkie builds up a portrait of Van Gogh, finding the sources of his unhappiness and discovering the seeds of his inspiration. The secrets of Van Gogh’s life are exposed, the possibility of the sexually-transmitted disease he suffered from, the masochistic torment Vincent went through as a missionary among Belgium’s coalmines as we journey through Van Gogh’s life, through Europe, in the shadow of the most enigmatic figure of modern art.

“The painter Vincent van Gogh, who ended his anguished life with a bullet to the chest, may have left a secret son as well as his sunflower paintings… The discovery was made by Ken Wilkie… who has spent 30 years researching the artist’s life.”
‘Sunday Times’

“An interesting and entertaining exploration of various periods of Van Gogh’s life… Wilkie’s enthusiasm and passion for the subject are contagious… Wilkie’s contributions to Van Gogh research over the years have been remarkable.”
‘Van Gogh Gallery.com’

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The Artist’s Way

Published on March 21, 2013 in Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Julia Cameron, top10.

The Artist's Way
Julia Cameron

978 0285 64126 6
Format EB
£14.99

Also published by Souvenir Press: The Artist’s Way Workbook, the essential companion to The Artist’s Way.

Have you ever longed to be able to draw or paint, write or compose music? With The Artist’s Way you can discover how to unlock your latent creativity and make your dreams a reality. With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron leads you through a comprehensive 12-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity. This book links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe.

The Artist’s Way provides a twelve-week course that guides you through the process of recovering your creative self. It dispels the ‘I’m not talented enough’ conditioning that holds many people back and helps you unleash your own inner artist. Its step-by-step approach will enable you to: start out on your own path to creativity, dissolve the barriers that prevent your creative impulse from finding expression, use your rediscovered talents in whatever way you wish, learn that it is never too late to start fulfilling your dreams. The Artist’s Way helps demystify the creative process by making it part of your daily life. It tackles your self-doubts, self-criticism and worries about time, money and the support to pursue your creative dream. It has already helped thousands of people to uncover their hidden talents – it can help you, too.

“Designed to help you unlock creativity in any form… in art, poetry or music – or even using creativity as therapy.”
‘Yoga’ Magazine

“Unleashing our creative potential is the key to a more meaningful life… a powerful way to access it.”
‘Psychologies’ Magazine

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The Vein of Gold

Published on February 15, 2013 in Coming Soon... and Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Julia Cameron, Spring 2013.

The Vein of Gold
Julia Cameron

978 028564 204 1
Format PB
£16.00

The Vein of Gold is the new title from Julia Cameron, and the essential companion to the best-selling The Artist’s Way. If you have followed The Artist’s Way, turn to The Vein of Gold to take you on the next stage of your creative journey.

Featuring inspiring teachings on the creative process, The Vein of Gold contains more than one hundred imaginative and energising tasks to inspire and engage the reader, and to lead to spiritual growth, renewal and healing. This book inspires artistic mindful living, assuring the reader that creativity can be a spiritual path leading to personal growth. Julia Cameron leads us through a journey ‘to the heart of creativity’, through seven creative kingdoms:

The Kingdom of Story where language animates our self-guiding image

The Kingdom of Sight where we honour our most personal feelings

The Kingdom of Sound where we tune into the melodic flow of creative life

The Kingdom of Relationship where we sharpen the skills to choose companions

The Kingdom of Attitude where we cast off negativity

The Kingdom of Spirituality where we strengthen contact with the higher realms to discover unsuspected inner resources

The Kingdom of Possibility where we inhabit our creative life vision.

A further pilgrimage for the millions of readers for The Artist’s Way, this new book from Julia Cameron provides a series of leading tools intended as a prescription for artful living. Whether you are already actively pursuing a creative enterprise or are just beginning to nurture your own creativity, this powerful book provides the innovative and practical tools for mining the vein of gold within you.

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Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Published on February 15, 2013 in Coming Soon... and Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Betty Edwards, Spring 2013.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Betty Edwards

978 028564 177 8
Format HB
£20.00

The expanded and updated fourth edition of the world’s most widely used drawing instruction book. This step-by-step guide to drawing will give you greater confidence in your artistic ability, and enhance your creativity.

Whether you are a professional, an art student, or you enjoy drawing as a hobby, Betty Edwards’ practical guide will deepen your artistic perception and provide a new way to appreciate the way you perceive the world around you: a shift to the right side of the brain that uses its more intuitive and artistic aspects of thinking.

This definitive revised and expanded edition includes:

A new introduction.

A new chapter on the five basic perceptual skills of drawing that provides a practical step-by-step approach to drawing to give all artists greater confidence.

New exercises to help your perception “cross over” from the dominant left-brain mode to the right.

Lessons that will help with problem-solving in every realm of life as a creative alternative to the analytic traits of left-brain thinking that dominates modern life.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain made art instruction into a handbook for all types of creative thinking, as well as an approach to leading a more artful life, and is now updated to consider the technological effects of twenty-first century living.

“Clear, intelligent… practical and sensible… It is an essential beginning.”
‘The Artist’

“A landmark in drawing tuition”
‘Leisure Painter’

“This innovative, landmark book should be required reading for all art students.”
‘American Artist’

“Not only a book about drawing, it is a book about living. This brilliant approach to the teaching of drawing… should not be dismissed as a mere text. It emancipates.”
‘Los Angeles Times’

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The Tools of Screenwriting

Published on September 22, 2011 in Creativity, Education and Out Now. 0 Comments Tags: David Howard & Edward Mabley.

The Tools of Screenwriting
David Howard & Edward Mabley

9780285639027
Format PB
£12.00

The Tools of Screenwriting has been the definitive text for screenwriters since the 1970’s. Edward Mabley’s classic guide to dramatic theory has been revised and updated by David Howard, making it the essential book for anyone who studies film or wants to write a screenplay, creating a book that utilises the universal principles of drama and reveals how they are specifically used in screenwriting (using examples from Aristotle to Orson Welles).

Addressing questions of dramatic structure, plot, dialogue, characterisation, setting, imagery and other topics as they apply to filmmaking. This is a practical and comprehensive guide based on experience and what works in classic screenplays. In making individual decisions about each element of the screenplay a writer builds a good story from the ground up. David Howard offers in-depth consideration of the many elements that make up a screenplay, clarifying his lessons through examples from classic films: Annie Hall, Citizen Kane, Some Like It Hot, Rashomon and sex, lies, videotape among many others.

Accessible, clear and practical The Tools of Screenwriting is a working bible for the budding screenwriter. Recognising that story structure is the framework for a successful screenplay David Howard teaches how to incorporate the other elements so that the screenplay takes on a life of its own, creating the emotional connection, spectacle and intellectual stimulation that will impact on an audience.

David Howard’s advice comes from years of experience, and from having taught hundreds of successful writers. He makes film writing accessible to the budding screenwriter, and this informative outline of the screenwriting process provides what can be learned from dramatic theorists and playwrights over the centuries.

Edward Mabley was a writer and director, he taught at New York’s New School for Social Research.

David Howard founded the prestigious graduate screenwriting programme at the University of Southern California. Among the hundreds of students he has taught are the writers of Natural Born Killers, Carla’s Song and My Name is Joe; as well as the writers of TV series such as ER, NYPD Blue and The X-Files.

Souvenir Press also publish David Howard’s How to Build A Great Screenplay.

“The Tools of Screenwriting is the best primer on the craft.” Frank Pierson, Oscar winning screenwriter of ‘Cool Hand Luke’

“A wonderful and indispensable producer’s guide to story, storytelling and screenwriting.”
Lawrence Turman, producer of ‘The Graduate’

“A clear run down of the tools you’ll need to generate a good screenplay… A worker’s guide… if I ever start teaching on a screenwriting course, I would definitely use this as my core text.”
Screenwriting on the Blog

“Advice to spare within the… pages of this excellent, well-established guide… Once the basics and the ‘tools’ are discussed, the second half of the book then turns to useful analyses of some 16 famous films including foreign language classics like The 400 Blows and Rashomon.”
BAFTA Online

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Solutions for Writers

Published on May 25, 2011 in Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Sol Stein.

Solutions for Writers
Sol Stein

978 0 285 63525 8
Format HB/PB
£12.99

In this supremely practical and constructive book, a master editor of some of the most successful writers of the century shares the secret techniques of his craft. As the author explains, ‘This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions – how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place.’

Amid a wealth of immediately useful guidance not available anywhere else, he explains how to sketch a character in a few deft words; how to create instant conflict; how to write dialogue that is both exciting and moves the story forward; how to use flashbacks and background material most effectively. Writers of both fiction and non-fiction, whether novices or accomplished professionals, will find a host of fresh ideas that can lift their work to exciting new levels, all conveyed in informative, entertaining prose that makes the book a delight to turn to again and again.

Best-selling novelist, playwright, poet and teacher, Sol Stein is above all an editor of genius. Over forty years he has edited writers as diverse as James Baldwin, Dylan Thomas, Jack Higgins, W. H. Auden, Budd Schulberg , David Frost and Lionel Trilling. He has lectured on creative writing at Columbia, Iowa, UCLA and the University of California at Irvine.

“Creative writing courses up and down the country are jammed. But everything you need is in this wonderful volume… Stein is a fascinating guide and teacher. This should be required reading for all Booker prize judges and about 90% of published authors.”
‘Daily Mail’

“Plenty of how-to books are strong on theory – they explain the theory of writing arresting openings, of creating interesting characters and so forth – but Sol Stein’s strength is that he demonstrates these things in highly practical terms.”
‘Writers News’

“The strength of Mr Stein’s book is that he looks at published examples of how writers have tackled all these problems.”
‘Writing Magazine’

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New Drawing Handbook

Published on May 25, 2011 in Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Betty Edwards.

New Drawing Handbook
Betty Edwards

978 0 285 63664 4
Format HB/PB
£15.99

For all those who long to have the ability to draw, to produce an accurate representation of the world around them, Betty Edwards opened that up to them with her classic drawing guide, New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Now she has produced a workbook containing exercises that will reinforce the five basic skills of drawing. The ability to draw is not an innate talent but the ability to activate the right side of the brain; the right side of the brain controls our creativity but education in emphasising the left side of the brain’s conceptual, analytical manner often causes it to stagnate. Betty Edwards’ exercises reactivate the right side of the brain, encourages a new way to see and bringing about a dramatic improvement in the ability to draw.

New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the most successful drawing instruction book ever published, its sales now stand at several million, because its system really works. By following the exercises the artist will discover a radically different way of seeing and thinking; a shift to the right side of the brain, utilising its more intuitive and artistic aspects of thinking.
Now Betty Edwards provides a series of simple but effective exercises to follow while practicing your drawing. All subject matters are covered, from portrait drawing to still life, landscapes to imaginative drawing and a variety of mediums are explained such as pen and ink, charcoal and conte crayon. Each of the forty exercises provides an appropriate subject matter, brief instructions and a ready-made format in which to draw (the revolutionary Viewfinder which is provided).

Betty Edwards is Professor Emeritus of Art at California State University. She lectures extensively, and is a consultant at many leading creative businesses. Her method of teaching people to draw uses the brain research carried out by Professors Jerome Bruner and Roger Sperry.

“The first edition of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain… was a landmark in drawing tuition… The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook has been written as a supplement… (The viewfinder) is an ingenious way to understand and overcome the problem of foreshortening and to grasp the fundamentals of form and relationships.”
‘Leisure Painter’

“The workbook contains just enough of Edwards’ theory – along with dozens of illustrations – that one need have no qualms about giving it as a gift… does a pretty good job of breaking down the technique of drawing into easily-digested pieces.”
‘Artists & Illustrators’

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The Natural Way to Draw

Published on May 25, 2011 in Creativity. 0 Comments Tags: Kimon Nicolaides.

The Natural Way to Draw
Kimon Nicolaides

978 0 285 63838 9
Format HB/PB
£14.99

Concentrating on mastering the key concepts of drawing that will make a drawing come alive in his own, unique and perceptive, way Nicolaïdes focuses on teaching how a student can convey gesture and action, expression and feeling in their work. Consisting of 64 exercises that are intended to be studies over the course of a year, each section will develop earlier skills and is a constructive way for the student to begin to look at people and objects in a fresh way that will be the foundation of their drawing.

Extensively illustrated with reproductions of the work of the Old Masters (including Raphael, Titian, Rubens) to the work of Van Gogh and Picasso, as well as the work of his students, which demonstrate the development a young artist can achieve through following this guide.

Kimon Nicolaïdes taught at New York’s Art Student’s League for fifteen years. He had a natural talent for teaching and became an inspiration to a generation of devoted young artists, as well as leaving behind the concrete system of art teaching presented in this book.

“If your New Year’s resolution is to improve your draughtsmanship… Kimon Nicolaides ’The Natural Way to Draw is a sure bet… Instructive chapters devoted to drapery and muscles will improve your technique no end.”
‘Artists & Illustrators’

“’Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see,’ claims Kimon Nicolaides in his seminal how-to book… (a) masterpiece.”
‘Camden New Journal’

“Renowned art teacher Kimon Nicolaides (explores) a system for teaching how to draw that anyone can follow… Used by thousands of students looking to improve their drawing skills.”
Times Educational Supplement

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The Artist’s Way Workbook

Published on May 24, 2011 in Creativity. Closed Tags: Julia Cameron, top10.

The Artist's Way Workbook
Julia Cameron

978 0 285 63793 1
Format HB/PB
£15.99

The companion workbook to The Artist’s Way.

For the millions of people who have uncovered their creative selves through the ‘Artist’s Way’ method, here is a workbook and companion to the international bestseller. With its life-changing twelve-week programme, ‘The Artist’s Way’ has touched the lives of millions of people around the world. Now, for the first time, fans will have this elegantly designed and user-friendly volume for use in tandem with that book. ‘The Artist’s Way Workbook’ includes: more than 110 Artist’s Way tasks – more than 50 Artist’s way check-ins – a fascinating introduction to the workbook, in which Cameron shares new insights into the creative process that she has culled in the decade since ‘The Artist’s Way’ was originally published – new and original writings on Morning Page Journaling and the Artist’s Date, two of the most vital tools set forth by Cameron in ‘The Artist’s Way’.

“Designed to help you unlock creativity in any form… in art, poetry or music – or even using creativity as therapy.”
‘Yoga’ Magazine

“Unleashing our creative potential is the key to a more meaningful life… a powerful way to access it.”
‘Psychologies’ Magazine

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Archive for the 'Creativity' Category