You are flying in a hot air balloon under the arch of a rainbow somewhere over the emerald meadows of Norway. And you understand that when you wake up, all this will no longer be with you - no ball, no rainbow, no Norwegian meadows and valleys. How to save all this? Yes, you guessed it right.
“According to how you see things, what feelings are hidden behind your works, you change. Drawing helps not only to convey and copy objects. With its help, you can enhance what you see and give the object an emotional component. The drawing will only get better from this! Feel free to draw as you feel. The drawing should show how you feel about the object! Compromise in art means death. The brighter the emotions in the drawing, the more interesting it is.”
This idea from the book "The Sketchbook of Your Ideas" seems to have greatly influenced the way I draw. On my attitude towards drawing. Previously, I really wanted to copy everything very accurately when I copied from photographs or paintings I liked. But accuracy in drawing is not the most important thing; there is a camera for that. Copies are not interesting. But when the picture shows the attitude towards the object, the emotions are visible - it’s a completely different matter. And what a camera is definitely not good for is that it cannot capture an idea, or a dream, or a memory. And you can draw all this.
Below I will tell you more about this book, but for now this is what I have come up with over the past couple of weeks:
Feather
Remember the crazy colorful dawn from ? Then the diluted paints remained and they turned into a feather.
Forest
Red-billed Blue Birds (Fatted)
City
When I just started drawing, two days before summer, I was seriously interested in the question - where do illustrators get their images from? I now know the answer to this question. Firstly, the image is invented for the task. The book “The Illustrator Profession” perfectly shows how to do this using the Morphological Matrix tool. Secondly, the image throws up your own unconscious when you don’t expect it at all. For me this happens most often when I fall asleep. One night, this picture of the city was born against the backdrop of bright clouds:
And another time this image came:
Why lion? Why with feathers on his head? At three o'clock in the morning I couldn't fall asleep, but I was drawing...
To ensure that the images that emerge from the darkness and silence are not lost, I always have a rough sketch pad with a pen next to my bed.
Branch with flowers with watercolor pen
A watercolor pen is a beautiful miracle. She can do some really cool things. You can mix colors, vary color saturation, and write out very subtle elements. Lovely. When I drew this picture, I thought that I would have to try making her own postcards. She's perfect for this. Sometimes priceless things cost nothing at all.
Summer in Perm
Something is all bright and colorful, let me draw reality, I once thought. I spent a long time selecting colors, mixing paints: white, ultramarine, bright blue, sepia and neutral black. And I painted the sky. Real summer sky of Perm 2015. Similar?
Tree outside the window
Sketchnoting, evolution in 50 days. On the left is what happened when I first started drawing. The first book about Visual Notes, remember? It turned out to be, frankly, scribbles :) On the right is the second attempt after about 50 days. Neatness, shadows, composition - I like it much more.
A collection of images and short descriptions under one cover. Format: - notebook, album, stitching sheets... In general, DIY book.
So the format is less important. What is important is the content, united by a common theme - travel (travel book), cooking (art-cooking book), book of memories, sketch book (book of sketches), personal diary, dreams and plans (book of visualization of desires) and so on.
And, most importantly, the content should be “art”, that is, art, creativity. By the way, the word “art” has an interesting origin. The closest cognates are inert and articulation. The word itself in Latin sounded “ars” and changed a number of meanings:
- connection, connection;
- connection on paper, in stone, in a product;
- art, dexterity, technique
That is why: it is not at all necessary to draw at a highly professional level in order to create a good art book. And, in general, you may not be able to draw at all - it’s as if a bear stepped on your hand. The main thing is to tie together beautifully, to connect the different parts, which can be done in many ways.
An art book has several unwritten and often unfollowed rules. In general, these are not the rules for creating an art book, but the rules for composition and color selection. Those who follow the rules get better results than those who do not. But this is just a guide :)
Rules for a good art book page.
The first rule of a good art book page: unobtrusive rich background. Unobtrusive - so as not to interrupt the main object (the object should be clearly visible against the background with half-closed eyes). And rich means he is not the same in one place as in another. Not radically, just a little, literally half a tone or half a detail. But different.
The easiest way to create a rich background is with wet-on-wet watercolor. To do this, use watercolor paper. Apply with clean water using a sponge/brush. And then - a flight of fancy with a wide variety of colors and shades. When the colors hit the water, they spread out in strange spots and mixtures.
What to do if the background turns out to be very intrusive?
It’s easy: take white acrylic paint, dilute it with water and apply several layers, waiting for each one to dry, to achieve the desired degree of paleness.
Or another option is to stick paper (white, colored, translucent, etc.) where the page elements will be.
The second rule of a good art book. At the page there is a main, key object. He is the first to attract attention. It reflects the theme and essence of the art book. It can be anything - text, an image, a spot, a shaped hole... The main thing: it must be clear that this is the main thing.
First example:
Second example:
How can you make a central figure?
An unusual method is the method discussed in the article “Watercolor is a masterpiece for everyone.”
In short, you find an image you like on the Internet/magazines. Cut it out. Adhere the clipping or cutout onto paper (preferably watercolor) with masking tape.
Paint all the free spaces with watercolors as you wish. WITH at sew and get a beautiful rainbow silhouette, an excellent basis for an art book page.
An easy way: find what you need in magazines/the Internet, cut and paste.
Another way is to use the tips from the article “Wall sticker “Cat”, but reduce the scale.
Next, apply materials from the series “How to learn to draw? Lekgo! “... But this is a long way. Although it gives excellent results.
The third rule of a good art book: secondary figures should be brighter than the background, but not interrupt the main figure. Secondary figures include text, images, leaves, seeds, pieces, details, pebbles, shells, everything that relates to the theme and is worthy of pasting into your art book.
There are other rules (for example, the rule “You don’t show half the battle to a fool” from the article “Moments that destroy creativity”)... But the ones listed are the main ones.
And finally, a short video tutorial on how to make an art book:
Summary:
- You don't know how to write fonts? Use the printed ones!
- Don't you know how to draw? Use already drawn/photographed templates!
- You don't know how to create a composition? Use the rules from this article!
Happy creativity with great art books!!!
By the way, you can get acquainted with the art books in much more detail using the link http://art-expiration.livejournal.com/196768.html
Artbook, scrapbook, sketchbook, Macbook... the essence of all these beechbooks is the same - this is a place for your creativity. This is a place where you can do whatever you want without fear of other people's criticism and without expecting someone else's assessment. You can draw, design, experiment, think, relax, enjoy creativity, reflect bright moments in life.
Every person who draws has many drawings, sketches, sketches and creative endeavors. All this often becomes just a bunch of artistic rubbish. To prevent this from happening, people turn their piles into art books, scrapbooks, sketchbooks, art notebooks, travel journals, etc.
Collage of photographs about London
Sketchbook - notepad for sketches
I first saw sketchbooks at an exhibition of student work at the British Higher School of Design. I was very inspired by how the British students work with them and I decided to collect my heaps of drawings into a beautiful book. The point is that one task is worked through 20-30 turns. Sketchbook pages are sketches, drawings, notes, collages of clippings and materials on a given topic. The goal is not for all pages to be beautiful. A sketchbook is needed to think on paper, to work on a project - it is a working tool.
Even if you are not a designer at all, such a notebook can be used to plan work projects, apartment renovations and any other personal project. If you decide to master a new area of knowledge - programming or crocheting - you can draw all this in diagrams, write down theses, stick on printouts of important texts and understand all the details.
And working with a sketchbook is a pleasant moment of creativity and anti-stress therapy.
Magazine clippings will help you understand what you like and want
What happened to me
By analogy with the pensieve in Harry Potter, I named my huge notebook The Mind Book. :-) I have separate notebooks for work projects, and in my art book I draw and glue collages. These are posters of your favorite films, tickets from concerts of your favorite musicians, flyers from exhibitions, memorable collages and drawings from travel, sketches and notes, as well as simply abstract ideas and compositions made of paper. It is not a scrapbook, although the idea of collages of all sorts of things originates in scrapbooking, but for some reason this direction has turned into stamping girls' photo albums for weddings and newborns. :-(
Collages and drawings from the trip
I also make a collage of memorable events and simply beautiful pictures that I manage to collect. The easiest way to work is with materials from trips - everything you collect can be put into an art book almost unchanged. Any receipt, any ticket, any note adds memories to the collage. Each art book is unique and can tell a lot about its author, as well as inspire new ideas and projects. You can use any idea for an art book if you like it. Even in illness you can find inspiration for creativity.
The background for these drawings was the instructions for the medications.
Materials for the art book
Materials have been collected over the years: almost every piece of paper or packaging that comes into our hands is considered as material for a collage. The important thing here is to quickly grab the scissors and send the clipping into the correct box.
Magazines are cut into pieces from letters and interesting pictures. Not all magazines are rich in material: at first the thick gloss seems like a treasure, but in reality you can cut out barely a dozen pictures or letters from it. The important thing here is to understand what topics you are interested in for collages and collect magazines on these topics. I'm interested in home and interiors magazines, and in hipster magazines I often find a lot of interesting but often useless pictures.
I especially like collecting postage stamps and stickers from foreign parcels. They complement large works well with their small details or serve as a background. Old sketches also serve as a background; from them you can collect a selection of ideas that are depicted in these sketches.
I collected most of my student work into an art book, and they immediately stopped being unnecessary trash! Sometimes I return to past tasks and work through them again, but in a new way: these could be patterns, ornaments, compositions or color combinations.
Systematization and archiving
In order for this whole undertaking to be of good use, you need to imagine what artistic material is available, and for this you need order. So, I have folders with clippings by category: photographs, words and letters, background elements, memorial pieces of paper. When you already have a general idea for a spread, it’s quite easy to look through the material from the desired category and pick something up. Sometimes pictures that haven’t stuck together for a long time can be very suitable for some kind of work.
If you want to develop your creativity, artistic taste and simply spend your free time usefully, try creating art books. What is an artbook? A graphic album (from the English Artbook) is a collection of images, illustrations and photographs collected under the cover as an album. Most often, its contents are united by a common theme. The images may include works of the same artist or works of the same genre.
Artbooks: what is a graphic album?
An art book refers to books created and illustrated by the author himself. In addition, there are fanzines - small-circulation periodicals published by adherents of a certain direction of science fiction, music, etc.
Very often our memory is stored in old albums or hidden behind ordinary everyday activities, but an art book is a completely different matter. Photos and images, magazine clippings and your own illustrations will be scattered across the pages in completely different versions. And they will always be there until the next bright notebook runs out. Everything that is lost in our memory and slips away every day will be stored in an art book in the form of a note, drawing or any other thing glued to tape or with glue.
Ideas for creating a graphic album
Art books can be completely different in terms of subject matter and materials used. If you decide to create your own art book, the ideas can be completely different, and there are no hard and fast rules. This is the wonderful feature of art books - even a person who does not know how to draw can make it. After all, you can paste photographs or beautiful clippings from magazines and newspapers into it, even labels and menus from
As for the topic, there can be no restrictions at all. This could be a book about your life, in which you can display the past, future and elusive present. An art book can even consist of a set of sketches that we make while chatting on the phone or listening to a boring lecture at the university.
The album can reflect the happiest moments of the trip. Then it will be filled with tickets, sketches and, of course, bright photographs.
Another option is to make an art book with your own hands in the form of a wish book, in which all your dreams can be depicted. This is a kind of alternative to a vision board, which helps to visualize the most secret and desired things.
One of the areas of art therapy, which has become very popular lately, is the creation of graphic albums for the purpose of self-analysis. When creating an art book, a person not only expresses his creative nature, but also gives himself the mindset to overcome difficulties.
Working on an art book
To make your own graphic album, first of all you should decide on its basis, which can be a diary, a bound book, an album, a notebook. In other words, whatever your imagination suggests.
As already noted, usually the pages of an art book are united by a common theme - it could be a travel album, a personal diary, visualized desires, wedding fantasies and much more. But if there is no specific topic, then this is not a hindrance - you can make a prefabricated art book. Ideas can be completely different. The album may include sketches, sketches and phrases that made a special impression. In the process of creating such an art book, a person not only gets a lot of pleasure, but also splashes out his creative energy.
What to fill the album with?
When you have already decided on the theme and content of the album, it’s time to get down to the most interesting thing - its content. You can paste interesting clippings from magazines and just pictures, draw with a pencil, felt-tip pens and paints, collect memorable items, supplement everything with sketches and small notes. Very often, collage techniques are used to create an art book. Let's take a closer look at how various art books are created.
A collage is understood as something created by gluing onto a base materials and objects that differ in texture and color. Initially, a collage is a combination of images that arise in the mind, and not just a set of beautiful pictures. The finished image can be completed with ink, watercolor and other materials.
Although it was noted that there are no rules in the process of creating an art book, there are still some features worth noting. This is especially true for those people who are far from art and for the first time picked up brushes and pencils to learn how to make art books. What is a beautiful graphic album and what should you pay attention to when creating it?
Rule one: rich but unobtrusive background. Rich - meaning in one part of it is not the same as in another. Maybe only half a tone or half a detail, but still different. An unobtrusive background is one that does not interrupt the main subject.
The easiest way to create a background is to paint with watercolors on a wet sheet of paper. To do this, you need to take a thick sheet, smear it with a brush or sponge with clean water, and then paint it with different colors. When hit, they will blur into weird spots.
If the background still turns out to be quite intrusive, you need to take white paint, dilute it with water and apply it in several layers to the substrate, achieving the required degree of pallor. Then you will have the main object highlighted and you will get a beautiful art book. What is the key element that attracts attention? It is this that contains the main idea that the art book reflects. This can be an image, text or shape. It is very important that any viewer immediately understands that this particular object is key.
The easiest way to highlight an object is to find an image you like in a magazine or the Internet, cut it out and stick it on a backing. And the free spaces can be painted over.
Another rule of a good graphic album is that secondary elements should not interrupt the key object, but be brighter than the background. These can be images, text, leaves, pieces, shells, photographs. In general, everything that is worthy of your attention and relates to the theme of the album.
An art book is a flight of fancy, a collection of important images and elements united by a common idea. When creating such an album, you can safely do whatever you want: combine various materials and handicraft techniques, express your imagination in the form of intricate images and unexpected solutions, and experiment. And remember that you shouldn’t live in the past. Learn to turn the pages, because life is full of downs and new ups. The main thing is how you treat them.
Artbooking is still little known in our country, and yet almost everyone has encountered it in one way or another and even practiced it.
Remember school questionnaires and “friends’ diaries” - ordinary common notebooks in which you pasted beautiful stickers, magazine clippings, postcards, and drew what you loved? What about dried flowers placed between the pages of your favorite book? What about notebooks in which you like to draw and just scribble between important notes? But all this is artbooking.
The word artbooking can be translated from English as “book decoration”. And the big advantage of this direction is that it does not require any material costs, unlike its related scrapbooking.
This is the creation of thematic notebooks: personal diaries, travel albums, notebooks for sketches and notes. The main rule of such notebooks is the complete absence of rules. Take an old, already filled-in diary, cover its pages with multi-colored paper, and draw something on top, write it and stick stickers. Or you can paint each sheet with paints - the main thing is that you like both the process and the result, and don’t even think about how the colors were chosen and whether the collage was compiled correctly. Just create, fully unleashing your imagination! And then you will understand what a wonderful psychotherapy this is, and how many positive emotions artbooking gives!
I won’t impose any master classes, but I will give you a few ideas. After all, the most important thing is to start, right?
As an art book, I use an ordinary general notebook with white unlined sheets. On this spread, I covered the left sheet with mother-of-pearl cardboard and cutouts from ordinary wrapping paper (their color doesn’t match the background at all, but we don’t have any rules!), and the right one - with a whole sheet of wrapping paper and pieces of paper decorated using curly scissors .
In general, I want to say that ordinary gift wrapping paper is the first assistant in our business. It is beautiful and costs many times less than designer paper for scrapbooking.
I also draw a round fish with different facial expressions on each page. She has already become a symbol of my art book.
Here, clippings from New Year's cards are used in the design, and the background of the right sheet is painted with pearlescent watercolor (you can use any other pearlescent paint - it has a very beautiful sparkling shine).
It is very good to use various glitters to decorate your pages.
This can be glue with sparkles, and dry sparkles for the eyes (they are good to stick to colorless nail polish), and gel glitters.
You can also use textured cardboard as a background, and make notes on shaped sticky notes. Glued sequins and rhinestones also look good.
Eventually, your notebook will become very plump and may even stop closing. But this has its own charm, doesn’t it?
I think that such a direction as artbooking will appeal to many people. But the question immediately arises: where to start? Or run to the nearest stall for stickers, or to the store for scrapbooking supplies, or to the stationery store for paints and colored paper?
Of course, you will also need all this, but, first of all, you need to choose a notebook from which your art book will subsequently turn out. And here we encounter the first difficulty.
Now that you can find almost any stationery on sale to suit any, most demanding taste - from children's notebooks to exquisite moleskins, it is very difficult to choose just one thing. The variety of covers, designs and shapes makes your eyes wide open. But there is only one piece of advice: the most important thing is that you really like the notebook you choose. Without this, no art book will work. After all, an art book is not a gift album, it is your personal little treasure, one might even say, a refuge for the soul. Therefore, it is difficult to advise anything here, but I will still try to make a short review of notebooks.
1. An ordinary school notebook.
It can be squared or lined, and the number of pages varies greatly. School notebooks are good because they have very beautiful covers and are relatively inexpensive. However, they have thin paper and if you plan to draw and glue a lot in the art book, the paper will simply warp.
2. Diaries.
They are, of course, more expensive, but there is more room for creativity. First of all, it has a lot of pages. Secondly, diaries can often contain drawings. And there are even diaries with multi-colored pages and locked with a key! In addition, diaries, as a rule, have a hard cover, which will extend the life of your journal.
But, alas, the paper there is even less suitable for design work.
3. Notebooks for notes and notes
This also includes the famous Moleskin. These are a kind of ready-made art books. There are interesting pictures printed on each page, and all you have to do is make notes and, if desired, add to the pictures.
These notebooks are good for everyone, except that they are quite expensive and leave little room for creativity.
4. Sketchbooks.
This is perhaps the best option. Here the paper is adapted to any creative experiments, and there are no extraneous lines or inscriptions.
5. Old books and written notebooks
This is a very interesting technique. For an art book, it is absolutely not necessary to take a new notebook or album. You can use a written diary or an unnecessary book. You will either cover each sheet with colored paper or paint over it. This will give your art book the look of an old book and even some mystery.
Notebooks are either sewn or spring-loaded. Which one to choose? Again, this is a double-edged sword. In merged notebooks, you can use a spread right away, but notebooks on a spring, when they swell, close better.
In a word, choose what you like. And most importantly, love your notebook!
