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Your goal is to internalize these influences and make them part of your visual vocabulary. And if you are worried about not being totally original, meditate on this humorous way Cloninger debunks what he calls “the Myth of Scratch”:
“The truth is, no human ever created anything from scratch. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth”, Genesis tells us – and we’ve been remixing His work ever since.”
The book also contains a good analysis of the formal elements used by the Bahaus, in particular Paul Klee and Kandinsky.
Favourite quotations
Apart from the quotations above, I liked some of the quotations selected by the author. There is the one from Paul Klee on the dialogue between artists and nature already published on the blog.
Another one is a saying by the craftsmen of Bali that reads: “We have no art. We do everything as well as possible.”
Overall, this is a very good and instructive book.
Additional information
Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for Print and New Media Designers by Curt Cloninger
Publisher: New Riders
Year of publication: 2006
Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process Curt Cloninger Design book Art book Creative process Creativity
This is just the inner circle, the core. Other disciplines can bring interesting information and inspiration:
But you can learn from other topics that are further away. For instance, garden design books contain valuable information on composition and colour combinations.
This only addresses the artistic side of the practice, and I am also interested in the business side of it, so I read books and articles on business, marketing and technologies…
Finally, I like to read fiction and poetry not only because they are generally a pleasure to read, but also to feed my imagination.
One last experience I would recommend: go to a lending library, in a section you never visited before, and pick a book that catches your attention (the title, the cover…), then bring it home and read it. Who knows what you can learn?
By all means, read art books, but also read laterally… Have you read great books you want to recommend? Please leave a comment below.
Paul Klee Self Portrait, (1911). Ink on Paper
[Source: Wikimedia]
Art quote Paul Klee Art and nature Hot-wiring Your Creative Process Curt Cloninger
Creative process Creativity Curt Cloninger Hot-wiring Your Creative Process Twyla Tharp The Creative habit