Customer Reviews

Drawing From Life: The Journal as Art

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is really inspiring! Its subject is the visual journal or notebook, but this isn't limited to just artists. An anthology of several pages out of people's journals, each accompanied by a brief backstory, it's about a diversity of techniques, mainly visual, that a whole variety of people use to record their reflections on the world around them. It includes travel journals, a songwriter's notebook, architect's sketchbooks, naturalists, even a volcanologist.

What pulls them all together is the fearlessness with which each uses the journal -- each entry is a compelling illustration of the idea of the journal as a tool for discovery. It's not that the drawings or collages in a particular journal are necessarily works of art in themselves, but that all are visual spaces for the mind to explore ideas out loud.

As a final point, I find the excellence of all the examples to be encouraging rather than intimidating. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to run out and by a new sketch book to scribble in.

As an avid journaler, I'm always intrigued to see what other people write about, draw about or observe in their own journals. There's nothing quite so personal as seeing what someone else has created at their most free - there's a certain kind of vulnerability and exposure on display that you don't get to see in a piece of artwork that has been created with the hope that it will have an audience.

Jennifer New has assembled an interesting and inspired collection of journals by people from all walks of life. Only a few of them are artists by profession, but this book demonstrates how many people keep an art journal, and how different their purposes are for doing so. Most of the journals feature sketching, sometimes with the addition of watercolour, although there are also collages, photo montages and pages comprised of found items and ephemera.

I like the way the author has grouped the journals by how she sees their primary function: observation, reflection, exploration or creation. Among the 'observation' journalers are an illustrator who works alongside a marine biologist, a vulcanologist, and a man who embarked on a self-portrait photographic project he called "I Learn Something New Every Single Day" in which he took a daily photo of himself and annotated it with one thing he learned that day, whether it was something important, or trivia about the lives of his friends. In the 'creation' category the author has put those who use their journals primarily for developing their ideas into larger creative projects, including an architect, a quilter, and someone remodeling their garden. The categories in between include travel journals, dream journals, and all sorts of books filled with random collections of thoughts and materials.

I think anyone who keeps a journal (or would like to) will be inspired by this book, not just by the images but also by the introduction to each theme and artist. There's a great balance of text and photographs, and I enjoyed reading each person's thoughts on the part that journalling plays in their lives.

This book is a great glimpse into how people from different fields treat their journals. From putting them up on a pedestal to utilitarian jotting down of memos and thoughts.

If you are looking for techniques this book does not have them. If you are looking for inspiration-this book certainly has it. The dimensions of the book is also quite nice as is the weight of the papers within. Includes a great variety of contributors-now I just want to see the rest of their personal journals.

I received this as a gift for Christmas and I think I have looked at it every day since. I would recommend this for a gift for yourself or family and friends.

If you love love looking at journal arts this is a book worth putting in your rotation.

To the world outside of practicing or incidental artists, the word "journal" connotes text and writing, so much penmanship. Jennifer New's DRAWING FROM LIFE effectively illustrates that the impulse engines for journaling--observation, reflection, exploration and creation--can operate through visual imagery, either collected scraps or original work, as well as text. Her book looks at artistic journals kept by a variety of people, some of them whose careers would suggest left-brain strengths but whose extemporaneous work is highly creative. Some of the journal-keepers she profiles are recognizable from the media, such as musician/filmmaker David Byrne, graphic novelist Lynda Barry, the guy who photographs everything he eats and the creator of the 1,000 journals project.

New offers a succinct profile of each journal-keeper and sample color plates from their books. It is exciting to see a mind in the moment of conception, and how different minds order information. Likewise, it is inspiring to see how journals can enhance lives and push creative problem solving faculties. An architectural designer notes that while his firm employs considerable high technology in its work, he finds that the germination of ideas is best promoted at the outset by the melding of mind, eye and hand through journaling. This is far more sophisticated than books dedicated to decorating journal and scrapbook pages.

Though a soft cover, the book is sumptuously produced. The pages are heavy, glossy stock, the binding is stitched, not merely glued. The lay-out is particularly effective.

Most of the books we read are written with the intent that they be read. But not this one. Here are the random thoughts, the sketches from life on the recesses of their minds of a bunch of people who keep diaries or journals. These are kept for various reasons, but for private reasons (except for scientists documenting their research) just to enable them to record what impacts their day.

Jennifer New managed to get a bunch of people to share their journals with her, and now with us. The format she has followed is to give a page or so of writing about each person and then a few pages from their journal. These are the private thoughts of these people that are now being shared. Some of the thoughts, the pictures, the words are profound. Some are fairly mundane, such as the chart of a month's temperature. Some reflect theoretical mathematical thought, an insight into a scientists mind.

It's an amazing collection of random art. Very enjoyable to look at, and that's what art is all about.

This book was filled with ideas and inspiration. With only one page of text per journal type - it was an easy read. No boring lengthy descriptions just lots of art from many different types of journal keepers.

If you are looking for pretty, "Somerset Studio" style journals, you'll be disappointed by this book. However, this book opens the mind to the possibility of many more kinds of journals. A wide variety of journalers from all over the world are represented here. Fascinating stuff!

I would recommend this book to anyone with a love for art, beauty, recording, scrapbooking or journaling. It is not instructive, but is rather a compilation of the journals of a wide array of people. Yet, it is inspiring for a book artist and appealing for those who enjoy keeping any type of paper record. I highly recommend this book.

I am a visual artist and have always been fascinated with the concept of journaling. This book helped me understand that there's no wrong way to keep a journal (for those of you who tend to think your journal isn't as interesting as other peoples, or that you're "not doing it right", this book is a confidence booster). Journaling is often personal and it's easy to feel self conscious of ones journal while in a vacuum; going through this book and seeing the stories and examples of total strangers helped me not be so critical of myself. I very much enjoyed the examples of each persons journal, especially the handwritten ones; the image quality was so good you could read the entries clearly. It's fun looking through other peoples journals, but confusing if you don't have the person there to explain things...this book includes how the journal writer works, why they do it, and how it has benefited other aspects of their career and/or life.

I was impressed that the majority of the people featured in the book weren't career artists; some were naturalists, psychiatrists, mothers, and college students (to name a few). I liked that there was a wide spectrum of individuals featured in the book.

It also shows that there are a variety of ways to keep a journal and that it doesn't always have to be a "Dear Diary" kind of scenario. It was also interesting to see what people used for journals and how they incorporated other media such as collage, digital photography, etc. or how journaling led to other forms of creation.

As other reviewers have mentioned this is not a book of journaling techniques. However, I found it inspiring to see the different kinds of journals people keep and it's given me ideas of my own to run with.

this has beautiful images!
and I was really happy to see that Brian and the 1000 Journal Project was included! It's a fantastic project and they're in process of filming a documentary about it! So if you like journals, check that out!
As for the rest of this book, my only complaint is that I would like to have seen MORE images of each book. It was a tease!