Customer Reviews

North American Indian Motifs CD-ROM and Book (Dover Electronic Clip Art)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Great clip art. Not as many illustrations as other books in the series. Everything from Aztec to Tlingit to eastern woodland to pueblo to plains - thereby not allowing many illustrations from each as one might like. Await volume solely on Southwest! The legends in the clip art are annoying but can be easily dealt with if you can crop the graphics.

This book includes almost 400 images, but only a few are taken from each of many many North American native cultures. Although they are loosely grouped together by region, the images from any one tribe or nation are scattered randomly throughout that section. Therefore, it is hard to find which images go together. The images do show the diversity of the Native American cultures, but I would have preferred that the book be organized by specific tribe/nation or by chronology. On the plus side, each image is numbered, so that it can be easily found on the accompanying CD-ROM.

The images are from the following Native American tribes and cultures: Acoma, Alabama, Arapaho, Athapascan, Aztec, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Blackfoot, Casa Grandes, Cheyenne, Chipewyan, Choctaw, Cochiti, Comanche, Cherokee, Chitimacha, Cree, Creek, Crow, Dakota Sioux, Dene, Haida, Hawikuh, Hidatsa, Hopi, Huichol, Inuit, Iriquois, Laguna, Kaska, Kwakiutl, Maidu, Makah, Malecite, Maya, Menominee, Mescalero Apache, Mestizo, Micmac, Mimbres, Mixtec, Mohawk (Iriquois), Mohegan, Montagnais, Nahua, Naskapi, Navajo, Nez Perce, Ojibway, Onondaga (Iriquois), Otomi, Papago, Passamaquoddy, Pima, Penobscot, Potowatomi, Pueblo, Salish, San Ildefonso, Santo Domingo, Sarcee, Sauk Fox, Seminole, Shoshone, Sioux, Slavey, Tesuque, Tinne, Tlingit, Toltec, Tsia, Tsimshian, Ute, Winnebago, Yuchi, Yurok, Zapotec, and Zuni. For some of these tribes or nations, there may be as little as one image - such as for the Chitimacha; for others, there may be several - such as the Hopi.

If you are looking for Aztec, Olmec, Mayan, Mixtec, or Zapotec images, I would recommend a different book from Dover instead, called "Ancient Mexican Designs" (ISBN: 0486995283). Interestingly, though, the book "Ancient Mexican Designs" does not include any Huichol, Mestizo, or Toltec images, as does "North American Indian Motifs".

The book delivers exactly what it promised, so normally I would give it 5 stars. However, because the images are not well-organized and because the originating culture is not identified for all of the images, I have downgraded my rating to a 4.

This is a great basic collection of Native American motifs. All images are black and white, as is indicated in the product description. The printed images provided in the book are true to size and of very high quality. Each image is identified with tribe name of origin and organized regionally. The easy-to-navigate CD, which requires no program installation, provides each image in several different file formats, including .GIF, .JPG, .TIF, .BMP and others. Because there is quite a wide variety of tribal motifs covered, there are only a handful of images from each tribe, but as an overview and basic collection, I would highly recommed it.

I've been looking for design ideas for polymer and metal clays and have been looking at the Dover series for motifs. I've found the other books particularly good, especially for curvilinear designs (Celtic, Halstadt) and faces (Chinese and Japanese designs and Art Nouveau) but wanted something more exotic and earthy.

I liked the spooky Haida designs--as I knew I would from visits to the Museum of Natural History in NYC--and some of the Maya glyphs with their tight and somewhat busy designs. Although I like Aztec pottery shapes, I've never been fond of their motifs. The eastern woodland designs with their florals are pleasant and a lot like those from the Scandinavian and Balkins countries. The Southwestern Pueblo designs, with their stylized animals and spirits, are also quite arresting. The designs representing the Plains Indians are less engaging and under represent what is available, which is unfortunate since some of their geometrics are quite good.

As usual, the CD format is much easier than the old floppy disk I was familiar with in the old days of clip art.

This art is NOT for the art or crafts professional! The clip art in this book is so crudely drawn, it could only have been created by an amateur, and certainly one with no interest in the subject or pride in the resulting product.

Since the art is copyright-protected and can't be used for resale items or commercial projects, a more sensible solution, at least for the professional, is to buy licensed stock art from a microstock photo web site. Not cheap, but if time is money, a professional will spend hours reworking THIS stuff just to make it marginally usable.

North American Indian Motifs CD-ROM and Book (Dover Electronic Clip Art) [Paperback]
This item should have had a CD-ROM included. This did not come with the book. Deceptive purchase. First time that I am very disappointed with Amazon purchase. Will probably cancel account.

The CD is very difficult to navigate. The "clip art" is not really clip art, but just copies of what's in the book, so you can't really use it on posters, flyers, etc. I had envisioned all these wonderful, colorful motifs that I could use for my various projects, however, this CD only has small black and white photos of some not-so-authentic motifs, if you will. I am disappointed.