Vincent Van Gogh wrote the most wonderful letters with sketches illustrating them. Link from Wood's Lot.

Bad Art
Its always good to do bad art. When you set out to do good art - its too easy to sit paralyzed with expectations. 'Allow yourself to be a beginner' Julia Cameron. Pomegranate and Paper has a nice piece today on "Bad" Journal Art. Great links too.

What are you going to do to support your creativity?

When I was teaching I came across people all the time who thought 'creativity' whether it was their best selling novel which they would write once 'unblocked' or they were going to sell water colours and this would get them out of the job they hated.

Creativity will not save you and I tried to get my students to think about how they could support their creativity rather than how their creativity would support them. I would tell them to sort out their jobs and do their creativity at the same time. There is a great post at Living Small on this very topic of writing v career.

Food art
While surfing links from the great food blog Chocolate & Zucchini I found this The Secret Life of Food which promises all sorts of silly and surreal food goodies.

More famous exponents of the art of the altered book

Playwright Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell were jailed after improving over 70 books from Islington Library. They are now in the Islington Council archives but I can't find a link to show you what they looked like.

While searching for references to Joe Orton I came across this article by Suzanne Nielson Joe Orton: Cleansed or Condemned by Maniacal Rage.

One step on from collaging
are altered books.

Modern Gypsy has some beautiful examples at her website. And a How to Page.

Serendipitously I found Jane Bode Smiley's work googling for more examples of altered books at the International Society of Altered Book Artists

Collaging
I love using this with classes as its instanteous art, its a quick way for people to make their own visions, its always 'unique and original' (people are very hung up about 'being original') and is FUN!

Kat's Paw's has an blog piece on collaging but many of the other articles I turned up on google I disagreed with their guidelines for collaging so here are my own~

Get a stash of magazines/brochures/catalogues/newspapers

A variety of starting media is best.

Get a A3 or bigger base sheet - using the back of cheap wall paper is good.

If not IMPROVISE! tear out magazine pages and tape into a backing sheet eg 3 x 5 magazine sheets make a large basis to work on. (This also results in more 'happy accidents' in the final collage.)

Give yourself a timelimit of 10-20 mins to flip quickly through the magazines.

Each time you see an arresting image or word or headline tear it out and put in a pile.

No sissors !*

Then give yourself 10-15 mins to paste down quickly onto the backing sheet.

No sissors - if you want part of an image tear around it.*

Use a glue stick as the least messy alternative.

When finished I like to play 'Private View' if I've been doing my collage in company and we go around admiring each one.

I find its best to put the collage up someplace you can see it near a desk or in a bedroom so you can contemplate it at leisure. They often have surprising insights into your current foibles, obsessions, and interests.

*I've found it helpful to ban sissors as I've had people sit for 5 mins cutting out something 'perfectly'. Squishing perfectionism is one of the delightful by products of collaging.