There are hundreds of art tools designed to help you make more work but let me share with you my number one creative tool.
It is something that I and my students have used in an almost endless amount of ways to generate inspiration, information and ideas.
It is also freely available and cheap to boot!
The tool is: second hand books!
I use books in lots of different ways and they have been there for me every time I’ve needed them. I’m pretty sure they will help you too.
I get mine from charity shops, but I also get given them from people and I have got some of my best ones from libraries that are getting rid of old stock. Libraries often leave them out in boxes asking people to take them away.
I prefer to collect larger books with pictures in but text only books are useful too. Let me share some of the ways that I have used books in my practice:
- For collage work. This is the obvious one. You can cut up the pages of books to make creative collages with.
- Tracing. For those of us who aren’t confident with drawing, or who want the aesthetic appeal of a traced image, books are perfect for this. You can use pictures or larger text to trace around and then transfer into an artwork. I have made a lot of artwork with ‘layered tracings’ as I found you got a delicate abstracted effect that you wouldn’t have achieved by just drawing alone.
- For inspiration. We all know that feeling of sitting down in our art space and twiddling our thumbs or scrolling on our phone. Having a couple of books to flick through is a relaxing way of getting our minds into the different zone of getting ideas and making artwork. Chances are that we will come across an image or a word that will give us an idea and hey presto we’re making artwork.
- For information. Making art is an educational process. We always learn something by doing it. We can use our collection of books to enhance this learning too by y’know, reading!
- Drawing and Painting. It’s great to draw from nature in the great outdoors but it’s not always appropriate to do so. When it’s raining, or dark, or we just don’t want to, we can draw and paint from images in books. If we feel ‘stuck’ with drawing and painting the same subject matter on repeat, then we can use books to give us fresh source material. This is why it’s good to have quite a random collection of picture books to hand. Pick one at random, flick through, and draw from the first picture that appeals to you.
- As a propping tool. Books have OFTEN been a very practical tool in my studio including leaning, propping and standing things up on them.
In this image I appropriated a part of an image from an art book, stuck it to a mirrored background and then painted some details to the side.
Where to get your books from:
- Charity or second hand/thrift shops are the best for this and usually sell them for about 50p/£1 each.
- Village halls often have a ‘free to take’ library of donated books.
- Libraries get rid of old stock and replaced editions. Ask you local library for any free books that may be being discarded.
- Car boot sales. These can sometimes be a bit more expensive as they might be collectors items but always worth a look.
What types of books?
I prefer large scale picture books but really the key here is variety. You want a variety of subject matter, size, colour, audience etc.
For example, I occasionally get kids picture books because the colours are so much more brighter and vivid which makes for great collage fodder.
I can’t resist historic books with black and white images in and I also like to get books on different cultures.
But my favourite type of book is, of course, anything to do with art, and more specifically still, I love books about landscape art.