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    Creative Grab Bag: Inspiring Challenges for Artists, Illustrators and Designers
    Creative Grab Bag: Inspiring Challenges for Artists, Illustrators and Designers
    Creative Grab Bag: Inspiring Challenges for Artists, Illustrators and Designers
    Ebook468 pages3 hours

    Creative Grab Bag: Inspiring Challenges for Artists, Illustrators and Designers

    By Ethan Bodnar

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    About this ebook

    Push the Limits of Your Creativity

    Creative Grab Bag captures the spirit of exploration and innovation—inside, you'll find inspiring work from 101 artists from around the world. Ethan Bodnar asked each artist to take on a task outside the realm of their normal work. Each task was randomly selected from a grab bag. The result is a collection of work brimming with creative energy. In this book, you'll find short biographies of the artists, examples of their typical work, their thoughts on the creative process, and images of their completed creative task.

    Here's a sampling of the creative grab bag tasks:
    • Design a Building
    • Make a Self-Portrait
    • Make Art like a Child
    • Design a Brand
    • Create Visual Statistics
    • Illustrate a Memory
    • Illustrate Your Day
    • Create a Collage
    • Create a Sculpture
    • Design a Book Cover
    • Design an Album Cover
    • Create a Photo Essay
    • Photograph Strangers
    • Design a Skateboard
    • Design a Pair of Shoes
    • Make a Wallpaper Pattern
    • Design a Typeface
    • Create an Animation
    • Design a Character

    Creative Grab Bag also features tear-out cards, so you can do the creative challenges yourself. Work together or in a group, and push the limit—you'll break out of your routine and take your work into unchartered territory.

    PLEASE NOTE: Tear-out cards are NOT included with the ebook version of this title
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJul 31, 2009
    ISBN9781440319396
    Creative Grab Bag: Inspiring Challenges for Artists, Illustrators and Designers
    Author

    Ethan Bodnar

    An Adams Media author.

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      Book preview

      Creative Grab Bag - Ethan Bodnar

      CREATIVE

      GRAB

      BAG

      inspiring challenges for designers,

      illustrators and artists

      ETHAN BODNAR

      9781600611476_0003_001

      DEDICATION

      For Mom and Dad, with much love.

      Special thanks to family and friends.

      9781600611476_0006_001

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      To make a book like this one involves so many people; everybody that helped to make Creative Grab Bag made it a remarkable experience. Without them, you would not be able to witness the visual brilliance that comes about when artists are challenged to explore their creativity. Thank you to everyone who came along for the journey.

      First, thank you to my parents, Debbie and Tom Bodnar, for everything that they have provided for me throughout my life and for all of their love. Thanks to my brothers, Nathaniel and Sean, for making life an everchanging adventure full of love.

      Thank you to all of the talented artists that contributed to this book. It was a great pleasure and honor to work with you.

      The first person that made this publication a reality is Megan Lane Patrick, the senior editor at HOW Magazine and Books. She emailed me back and said, I would definitely be interested in seeing a full proposal. This is a pretty cool idea. Thanks to Jane Friedman, editorial director at F+W Media, for going through the contract process with me. Jane handed the project off to Amy Schell who acted as my editor for the first part of the project; she assisted in getting the book off to a great start. For the second part of the book, I worked with Melissa Hill as my editor. She provided brilliant feedback and was just the kind of person I wanted and needed to guide me through the process. Thank you, Melissa and Amy. Thanks to Terri Woesner for the design of this book. Thanks to everyone else at F+W Media and HOW Books.

      Thanks to Mary Donnarumma Sharnick for introducing me to the publishing process; I wish her much success in her literary career. Thanks to my art teacher and advisor, Rusty Brockmann, and my other art teachers, Lincoln Turner, Robert Cutrofello and Andrea Carter. Thanks to Kate Bingaman-Burt for being there from the start of my adventure in graphic design. Thanks to everyone at Chase Collegiate School and the Hartford Art School.

      A special and heartfelt thanks to my family and friends: You are the ones that I am grateful to spend my life with, and you’re all amazing.

      TABLE OF

      CONTENTS

      9781600611476_0008_001

      Introduction

      Architecture 9781600611476_0008_002

      Design a Building

      Ben Barry

      Sarah Coffman

      Michael Gillette

      Juliana Pedemonte

      Art 9781600611476_0008_003

      Create a Portrait

      Ben Frost

      Jeff Kulak

      Make a Self Portrait

      Doug Bartow

      Make Art Like a Child

      Mauro Gatti

      Make a Painting

      Bob Borden and Duane King

      Kathleen Burns and

      Christopher Sleboda

      Danny Gibson

      Esen Karol

      Ellen Lupton

      Paul Paper

      Graphic Design 9781600611476_0008_004

      Design a Brand

      Peter Arkle

      Marc Johns

      Design a Poster

      Chris Judge

      Paul Octavious

      Justin White

      Create an Informational Graphic

      Aaron James Draplin

      Jeremyville

      Illustration 9781600611476_0009_001

      Create an Illustration

      Scott Barry

      Scott Burnett

      Create an Observational Illustration

      Nessim Higson

      Randy J. Hunt

      Andreas Shabelnikov

      Marcus Walters

      Illustrate a Memory

      Lanre Lawal

      Matthijs Maat and Kim Smits

      Mig Reyes

      Illustrate Your Consumption

      Xavier Encinas

      Sarajo Frieden

      Illustrate Your Day

      Aaron Hogg

      Mixed Media 9781600611476_0009_002

      Create a Collage

      Pablo Alfieri

      Liam Devowski, Benjamin Domanico,

      Joyce Kim and Samuel Ortiz-Payero

      Linzie Hunter

      Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit

      Jason Trojanowski

      Visualize Your Senses

      Felix Ng

      Paul Stonier

      Create a Sculpture

      Rusty Brockmann

      J W and Melissa Buchanan

      Russ Henry

      Tommy Kane

      Judy Lee and Shawn Liu

      Paul Sahre

      Samia Saleem

      Packaging Design 9781600611476_0009_003

      Design a Magazine Cover

      Scott Buschkuhl

      Sean Sutherland

      Design a Book Cover

      Chris Glass

      Liz Plahn

      Design an Album Cover

      Fabien Barral

      Richard Gilligan

      Quentin Margat

      John Martz

      Photography 9781600611476_0010_001

      Create a Photo Essay

      Beau Bergeron

      José Contreras

      Jodie Davis and

      David Parington

      Nevada Hill

      Digitally Manipulate a Photograph

      Carin Goldberg

      Nathanael Jeanneret

      Gilbert Lee

      Alex Ostrowski

      Photograph Strangers

      Ryan Cox

      Peter Kienzle

      Josie McCoy

      Product Design 9781600611476_0010_002

      Design a Skateboard

      Frank Chimero

      Carole Guevin

      Cristian Ordóñez

      Michael Perry

      Design a Shirt

      Rich Lyons

      Design a Piece of Furniture

      Undoboy (Chean Wei Law)

      Edvard Scott

      Design a Pair of Shoes

      Oliver Munden

      Massimiliano Panzironi

      Make a Wallpaper Pattern

      Will Bryant

      Steven M. Ilous

      Dan Matutina

      Make a Wrapping Paper Pattern

      Christopher Barrett, Edward Heal,

      and Luke Taylor

      Typography a

      Create Hand-Drawn Type

      Joachim Baan

      J u rat e Ga c ionyt e1

      Jason Puckett

      Mark Verhaagen

      Design a Typeface

      Tim Belonax and

      Christopher Simmons

      Kate Bingaman-Burt

      Jon Krohn

      Debbie Millman

      Veerle Pieters

      Visual Story-Telling 9781600611476_0011_001

      Create a Comic Strip

      Ragnar Freyr

      Isabelle Gehrmann

      Rich Hollant, Brian Grabell,

      Constanza Gowen-Segovia,

      Troy Monroe and Lanny Nagler

      Ryan Katrina and Mike McQuade

      Joshua Pyles

      Daniel St. George

      Jason Tselentis

      Create an Animation

      Christian Lindemann

      Douglas Wilson

      Design a Character

      J. Byrnes

      Jack Crossing

      Sebastian Litmanovich

      Michael Surtees

      Permissions

      INTRODUCTION

      9781600611476_0012_001

      In life, you don’t always know what is going to happen next. You have to work with what you’re dealt. You learn to try something new and make compromises. When you try something new, you can learn from your experience. We all embark on a process of discovery and exploration in life. The artists in this book have taken this voyage even further. Their boldness has created a book filled with creativity and imagination. It is a book about trying something new and opening up to different ideas; it’s about gaining respect for new challenges. This is a book of visual creations from people around the world that have come together through the exploration of the unfamiliar to create something beautiful. That exploration of new ideas is what this book celebrates.

      There was a point in my life when I was starting to take a real interest in the art and design community, and I decided that I would like to make a book, a tangible publication that you and I could hold in our hands. The idea came gradually: I would create a book that featured work by artists who had pulled a task from a grab bag. Once I figured out the premise of the book, I sent invitations for contributions for the book to creative people whose work I enjoyed. The artists I selected are from all over the world. Some are well known and some are up-and-coming artists. Each of them offer different styles of work in a variety of mediums. Soon, people wrote back to me and expressed their interest. That was an amazing experience, and I was a bit surprised by their enthusiasm because I didn’t have a publisher yet. Plus, this project would require contributors to do additional work; they could not just spend a couple minutes collecting past work to send. Each of them received a creative task picked at random from the Creative Grab Bag. Since the book is about learning to do new things with your creativity and exploring new ways of expressing yourself, the creative task couldn’t be from their current field of work. Furthermore, I asked each artist to also contribute a piece of their work that comes from their area of expertise, allowing them to showcase the creativity in their day-to-day work.

      During the project, I was motivated by communicating with people whose work I respected and enjoyed, and by the idea of the final product—their work in the book I was creating. They were successful in becoming more in tune with their creative spirits and channeling their artistic abilities in a new manner to create this book. It’s an honor, and I thank every single one of them for their creativity and diligence. Their excitement and respect for the idea behind the book is what kept me inspired to complete this work.

      Making a book is a wonderful thing; it is like nothing else. To me, books are something special, because viewing artwork on printed pages offers a magical feeling and viewing experience. I look forward to flipping through the pages and viewing what I have spent a year and a half of my life creating, the culmination of the dedication and passion that everyone contributed to the book. It’s a remarkable and beautiful experience, and it is one that I am pleased to share with you. Think creatively and explore.

      9781600611476_0013_001
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