Art & Quilt: Design Principles and Creativity Exercises
by Lyric Kinard
The author opens the book by saying that it will not teach you everything you need to know but that she hopes it will give you a solid foundation from which to spring and give you direction for further study. The book begins opens with a discussion on getting ready to create that includes guest essays by Janine Leblan who talks about Overcoming Fear, Laura Cater-Woods tells you "Yes, You are Creative" and Hollis Chatelain talks about "Doing the Work". The second chapter in this book introduces you to the Elements of Art starting with some guidelines on how to do the exercises and materials and tools and then moves into talking about elements for the textile artist which include texture, shape, line, color and value. Chapter three deals with principle of design covering unity and variety, focal point, balance and symmetry, scale and proportion, depth and space, motion, and rhythm. Chapter four focuses on using a 45 minute a day exercise to explore all of the subjects covered in the previous chapters and includes a student gallery to illustrate the results. The book closes with a chapter on evaluation and critique to help you evaluate your own work and how to interpret the opinions of others. This is achieved with several gallery style pages of the authors work accompanied by questions to ask as you view the piece.
While this is a well written book filled with lots of beautiful work it does lack the in depth look at any of the topics covered in the second and third chapter which deal with the elements of art and the principles of design. However, it does, as the author states in the beginning of the book give you a basic foundation from which to work forward from.










