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patlo's Reviews (1.32k)
Photography and the Art of Seeing: A Visual Perception Workshop for Film and Digital Photography
Freeman Patterson's book is a classic, and with very good reason. It was helpful for me in many areas: composition of visual art; contemplative photography; focusing and discovering my vision; intentionally making images rather than just discovering them. I recommend it highly for photographers of all kinds, and for visual artists of all kinds.
This is probably the most helpful book on beginner water color painting. Although the subjects are mostly limited to landscape, these core skills will help me in my own work past landscapes.
Cathy Johnson has published several fantastic illustrated journal books, all of which are worth finding.
This one on getting past the fear of this medium by practicing simple approaches will be very useful for me and for anybody who wants to learn a new medium, whether for illustrated journals, landscape, still life, or urban sketching.
Cathy Johnson has published several fantastic illustrated journal books, all of which are worth finding.
This one on getting past the fear of this medium by practicing simple approaches will be very useful for me and for anybody who wants to learn a new medium, whether for illustrated journals, landscape, still life, or urban sketching.
Taken as a study of photojournalism and portrait photography, using Cobain and Nirvana as the study subjects, this is an excellent book. It is fascinating to see the contact sheets of a cooperative work between photographer and subjects.
As a study of Cobain and Nirvana's final few months, you won't learn much new here.
Set your expectations accordingly, and you'll read a fantastic photo book.
As a study of Cobain and Nirvana's final few months, you won't learn much new here.
Set your expectations accordingly, and you'll read a fantastic photo book.
Having just finished Austin Kleon's previous book Steal Like an Artist, which I liked but didn't LOVE... I didn't expect anything different here. I mean, the book's exactly the same size and shape, the same layout, similar in approach. But this one hit me right between the eyes half a dozen times over.
I immediately started rereading this one, a library copy, and bought this one and Steal Like an Artist. I suspect that I didn't click with the first one because I read it too quickly and didn't really let it settle in. Or maybe it just speaks to a different stage of the artistic journey than I'm on. But Show Your Work... Oh, goodness. The second night I was reading it, I sat up four hours past my bedtime curating photo streams, removing the junk and the fluff, the "so what?" stuff that Austin speaks about. I kept in the stream photos of things-in-process, whether my new attempts at sketchnoting (and I'm NOT a drawing artist) or my attempts at yoga (I'm a middle-aged guy, inflexible and newb-like). I culled old photos of lattes and omelettes. I moved nearly two hundred photos of my family - fine snapshots, but not where I found creative inspiration for this stream - from my photo stream up to Facebook, where more folks are enjoying them as family photos anyway. Grandma and friends are there, not waiting on my photo streams. Four hours.
I also wrote six pages of journal notes, some by hand, some electronically; began to reshape my 9-year-old blog that I've left to die many times over. I revisited the great question of how I can find the metanarrative between all my distinct interests and outputs, to see what the main through-line is.
It's not just Show Your Work alone that sparked this - it was also much of David Whyte's poetry and lectures, as well as learning to doodle note and sketch note - but Kleon's book shaped and unblocked so much.
I can't recommend this book highly enough, and I'll be rereading Steal Like An Artist when my purchased copy of it shows up too.
I immediately started rereading this one, a library copy, and bought this one and Steal Like an Artist. I suspect that I didn't click with the first one because I read it too quickly and didn't really let it settle in. Or maybe it just speaks to a different stage of the artistic journey than I'm on. But Show Your Work... Oh, goodness. The second night I was reading it, I sat up four hours past my bedtime curating photo streams, removing the junk and the fluff, the "so what?" stuff that Austin speaks about. I kept in the stream photos of things-in-process, whether my new attempts at sketchnoting (and I'm NOT a drawing artist) or my attempts at yoga (I'm a middle-aged guy, inflexible and newb-like). I culled old photos of lattes and omelettes. I moved nearly two hundred photos of my family - fine snapshots, but not where I found creative inspiration for this stream - from my photo stream up to Facebook, where more folks are enjoying them as family photos anyway. Grandma and friends are there, not waiting on my photo streams. Four hours.
I also wrote six pages of journal notes, some by hand, some electronically; began to reshape my 9-year-old blog that I've left to die many times over. I revisited the great question of how I can find the metanarrative between all my distinct interests and outputs, to see what the main through-line is.
It's not just Show Your Work alone that sparked this - it was also much of David Whyte's poetry and lectures, as well as learning to doodle note and sketch note - but Kleon's book shaped and unblocked so much.
I can't recommend this book highly enough, and I'll be rereading Steal Like An Artist when my purchased copy of it shows up too.