Customer Reviews

Finding Your Visual Voice: A Painter's Guide to Developing an Artistic Style

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has been an inspiration to myself and several of my artist friends. It really helps you focus on your individual style and helps you find techniques that are best suited you personally. The layout is exceptional, and I loved the workbook style which allows you to experiment and use the various information provided by the guest artists.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in painting, no matter what level they are. What artist, or person for that matter, wouldn't benefit from learning to find and listen to their "inner voice"?

This book is an easy-to-follow guide to sort out your own style of creative expression. I'm not a painter, but I have started dabbling in mosaic. I'm convinced that this book can help anyone interested in forming and developing their unique style in any visual art medium.

The book is spiral-bound which means it can lay flat on the table while you refer to it. I love this feature. The chapters flow logically from recognizing your inspiration and suitable subject matter, to more technical topics like lines, composition, and process. The information is presented simply, with many examples to illustrate each point. Contemporary painters offer their advice through carefully guided interviews throughout the book. The most clever aspect of the book is the chance to review and reflect on each topic through end-of-the-chapter questions. Finally, exercises help you to apply what you have discovered about yourself and your art. Finding Your Visual Voice is a process of developing self awareness and you are gently guided through that process with this excellent book.

At first glance this book gave me the impression that it really was going to be a visual delight. The format of the pictures and interviews were a creative way to feel as if I were there with each artist Ms Mitchell interviewed. I am just beginning to experiment with the idea of artistic painting. This book has a variety of methods and formats to chose from if I want to experiment in various areas. As a teacher, I like the exercises at the end of each chapter. This book could be used for art classes as well as just for information about painting.

I received this beautiful book as a gift and have found it to be a wonderful companion in my studio. First of all it is packed with delicious colored photographs and painting reproductions on high quality paper. The concealed spiral binding makes it extra user friendly when lying on my drawing table but easy to retrieve from the book shelves (where it rarely stays). I found the interviews with artists to be insightful, perceptive and fun. I have enjoyed picking it up so many times and spending a couple minutes reading a gem that gives me the inspiration I need to move forward with my own work.
Thanks Dakota for a terrificly thought provoking book that distills and honors the creative process.

I am truly enjoying this book. It has helped me reflect on my artwork, as well as validate my subject preferences and style. In addition, the artist interviews and works featured are inspirational. It is a great addition to any artist's library.

I love this book. It's almost like your own personal journal of all the painters you like and what you learn over time, with each page more interesting and inspiring than the next. After reading only 2 or 3 pages, I am putting the book down and going into my studio. Doesn't get any better than this. You get to see a variety of styles and read the artist's commentary for his or her work and the author really helps the reader develop a focus for individual style.

I love this book, the artists featured, the quotes, the format. If you are a new painter, this would be invaluable. The format is good and the paintings are great. Highly recommend this book. I would give it a 4, but I just enjoyed it. For the joy, it gets a 5.

This book is fun to read, and introduces the elements (edges, values, color, composition) and styles (realistic, impressionistic, abstract, nonobjective) of art. It's an entertaining way to consider the facets of your artwork and help determine which ones you gravitate toward. If you've already gotten this far along, however, this may be a little too introductory. It is interesting see how the topics are presented, and gave me some insight into why someone would pursue other styles!

I am still at the beginning of this book, but it is a good book. It just makes me do "homework" type assignments to figure out what kind of art I want to spend my life doing, and I still haven't narrowed down the first part yet.

What I am saying is, this is a great book to keep and use throughout your life. It is not one to get from the library, read and return. If you are a true artist, it is my hope that you'll never be finished exploring this very helpful book!

A lovely book with some great ideas for expanding one's conception of what it is to "do art."