Alternative Art Journals: Explore Innovative Approaches to Collecting Your Creativity

by Margaret Peot, Peot

Turn everyday inspirations into one-of-a-kind art journals Art journaling is a fun way to collect and celebrate your creative thoughts and inspirations. Driven by the concept that we are all inspired in different ways, Alternative Art Journals shows how to create personal and unique journals. You will break free from the bound, white pages of the traditional sketchbook in favor of more customized formats and unconventional approaches. Will your journal take the form of a clothesline strung with images and ideas? A faux family album inspired by old, anonymous photos? A box filled with found treasures? Open this book and dive in to the free-flowing possibilities... You will learn to incorporate art into your daily life and embark on a thrilling journey to self-expression. "An art journal is the private domain of an artist, where you can work out ideas, experiment with imagery, divulge personal truths...a garden in which you are planting the seeds of art." - pg. 6

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published August 21, 2012

About the author

Margaret is thrilled to present her new picture book from Muddy Boots, AT NIGHT. What animals forage by night and sleep by day? This children’s picture book describes the nocturnal lives of nine common animals: foxes, porcupines, raccoons, skunks, opossums, bobcats, owls, mice, and rabbits. Join the adult animals guiding their children through the forest during the dark of night. The book includes information on the common names of the animal’s offspring (i.e. fox:kit).

Margaret's picture book CROW MADE A FRIEND, one of Holiday House's acclaimed I LIKE TO READ series, received a starred Kirkus review and was on the Kirkus Best Books of 2015 list. Her non-fiction kid's book INKBLOT: DRIP, SPLAT AND SQUISH YOUR WAY TO CREATIVITY (Boyds Mills Press, Spring 2011) received a starred review from School Library Journal, a Silver Eureka! medal for non-fiction books for children, and is an Orbis Pictus Recommended Book for 2012.

Her collaborative coloring books with Sourcebooks, LET'S COLOR TOGETHER: A SHAREABLE COLORING BOOK FOR PARENTS AND KIDS, and LET'S COLOR TOGETHER: SECRET WORLDS, are perfect for coloring with a friend. the images are arranged so that two people can color across from one another, an intricate image on one side and a simpler version of the same image on the other. These have found an audience not only with parents and kids who love to color together, but also with elders and kids, and elders and their adult children.


Margaret's COLOR, PUNCH OUT AND PLAY SETS: TEA PARTY, MUSEUM VISIT, and FAIRY HOUSE, with Pomegranate Publishing have been delighting children in North America and Europe.
TEA PARTY features paper teapots, tea cups and saucers and lots of pretty tea treats to punch out and color, and three "stage sets" to color in front of which you can have pretend tea. MUSEUM VISIT has three gorgeous gallery spaces with punch out hooks on the walls, on which you can hang paintings you create, or punch out and color a variety of sculptures, armor or Natural History objects. And finally, FAIRY HOUSE (2018) contains two fairies, their house, furry and feathered friends, and lots of furniture and accessories to punch out and play with in front of three woodland scenes: a pretty garden, a fairy fashion atelier, and a cozy house.


Margaret has also written art making books for adults: STENCIL CRAFT: TECHNIQUES FOR FASHION, ART AND HOME is full of techniques for making fun stuff with stencils (and making the stencils!), ALTERNATIVE ART JOURNALS: EXPLORE INNOVATIVE APPROACHES FOR COLLECTING YOUR CREATIVITY includes unusual journal techniques, such as the Faux Family Album, and the Card Set Journal. THE SUCCESSFUL ARTISTS CAREER GUIDE: FINDING YOUR WAY IN THE BUSINESS OF ART offers practical advice and interviews from visual artists who are successful in a variety of fields.

Her art techniques book, MAKE YOUR MARK: EXPLORE YOUR CREATIVITY AND DISCOVER YOUR INNER ARTIST (Chronicle 2004) has found an audience with education and art therapy practitioners, and was voted one of Library Journal's best books of 2004, one of only four how-to books on the list.

Margaret has taught workshops to children, young adults, and adults in New York public schools, libraries, to girl scouts, at senior centers, and at The Creative Center's Artist in Residency Training in NYC, the Creative Center's Creative Aging Training Conference, Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, and at Lake Placid Center for the Arts.

Margaret has painted costumes for Broadway theater, dance, television and the circus for more than twenty-five years (for such shows as WICKED, THE LION KING, ALADDIN, FROZEN, and most recently MOULIN ROUGE) and has taught costume painting at BYU, Miami University, The USITT South conference, NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Reviews

[Anna Olswanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." That's a quote from Albert Einstein. I've always believed that quote, so I've tried to look at Margaret Peot's book about art journaling as a way to help me think of new ways to keep a writer's journal. The activities she suggests are stimulating (and fun) for anyone who is creating books. And it's obvious from Alternative Art Journals that Margaret believes everyone can be creative. There is a deep kindness here.

Margaret has two DVDs based on her book, which you can read about on her website:

http://www.margaretpeot.com

[Shelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book indeed introduces a number of "alternative" art journal formats, however, I didn't find any of them particularly useful or compelling. There were a few alternative book formats (envelope, Tibetan), boxes to construct, and multiple "decks" of card-type collections. Any might have been interesting, theoretically, if they had been used to house complementary, unusual contents, but they were not. Similarly, I wasn't wowed by the media techniques the author introduced, such as rendering (a lot of) realistic-looking rocks, heavy emphasis on inkblot monoprints (which really do not, I'm afraid, look very much like butterflies), or just the copious inclusion of rather overwhelming black India ink. And finally, while I can see that some art journalists might enjoy giving new life to old photographs and letters by making up faux histories with them, an awful lot of space here is dedicated to the undertaking.

On the positive side, it's refreshing to see a more muted palette in a book on art journaling; most books seem to want to see how overwhelming they can get with really, really bright colors (all of them simultaneously). Instead, Alternative Art Journals highlights neutrals and earth tones, which suits the nature themes within very well.

Worth a check-out from the library, especially for experienced art journalists who are looking for some real outlier ideas that they are unlikely to employ frequently, but might find a use for here or there. (Unfortunately, this book does not rise to the level of "art porn" for me, as it is a tad drab for my tastes, but more importantly, the photographs are subpar.)

[Cyndi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains a ton of interesting ideas, but for some reason I found it all rather intimidating. I'm sure I'll come back to this book, but for now I'm just going to try some stuff, without thinking about longevity or a unifying theme...

[Gv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool ideas and step by step of techniques I have been hoping to try for years.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes a wide and creative variety of types of art journals, focusing on unusual journal types. It sparked my creativity: one can create an art journal from almost any type of material! Some of the journal-creating techniques are involved, ones I wouldn't take the time to try, and this cost this book a star in my rating. However, even those concepts inspire other, more simple ideas I think I would do. I enjoyed perusing this book!

[Elizabeth A · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you keep art journals and are interested in some of the ways you could create outside the book format, this book has some interesting ideas. I guess I was expecting more information on alternative journals than this book conveyed however. There were too many sections on page prepping, etc. However if you are a beginner art journaler, this might be just the introduction you need.

[Darby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is as the title says Alternative Art Journals - so no necessarily using books, but other surfaces such as making a card set (like tarots/playing cards), nested boxes, accordion books, a scroll and many others. Some have how-to's on creating some of those books. It is a good inspiration.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

clever