Storytelling Art Studio by Cathy Nichols

Storytelling Art Studio by Cathy Nichols ISBN-13: 9781440349355 Paperback: 144 pages Publisher: North Light Books Released: July 17, 2017

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
Storytelling Art Studio is the guide that will show you how to create mixed media art that tells impactful stories. It's a creative guide for mining your own life to manifest imaginary worlds, emotional narratives and clever characters. Each chapter presents a new subject--you may paint a tree, collage a landscape or use sgraffito to create a scene. You will begin with inspirational warm-up exercises, then learn how to do it with a step-by-step demonstration and even get to see alternate versions of the piece that explore the magic and impact of different choices.

Perfect for you no matter what your skill level or style, this guide does not have to be read in order. Simply choose what you would like to do and go for it! 10 projects and 10 inspiration exercises!


My Review:
Storytelling Art Studio is an art instruction book about making mixed media art that tells a story. The author has 10 projects that cover different aspects of story telling: using color to convey emotion, creating characters and sidekicks, setting a scene, creating conflict, adding text, using symbolism, repeating a motif, selecting a title, and such. She started each project by providing a creativity prompt to get you thinking and suggesting reference material for you to gather. Then she provided a step-by-step demonstration project. She broke the project down into simple steps with useful instructional text and photographs for each step.

She used paint chips (like for wall paint) to help select a color scheme. She usually used small wood panels (6"x6" to 8"x10") and acrylic paints for the projects as well as gel pens, ink pens, photographs, card stock, etc., for the mixed media aspect. Each project used a wide variety of materials, but the finished project is relatively small (which I like). Overall, I found her take on telling stories through art to be pretty basic (as you're creating just one scene) but interesting and easy to follow.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Google Preview.