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It’s Great To Create by Jon Burgerman (book review).

For such a tiny book, Jon Burgerman has wrote or should I say created an interesting tome in ‘It’s Great To Create’. The sub-title is ‘101 Fun Creative Exercises For Everyone’. As Burgerman explains most people doodle which means they can draw just a little. His exercises are designed to make you more playful and let any creative talent you have out. If anything, the number of ways he’s shown to do these things might throw you in the right direction but you’re going to be hard pushed to do some art somewhere that he hasn’t been there before. Mind you, as I speak from an apex of creativity, I probably have an unfair advantage. However, I am mindful of developing creative talent so any book that encourages you to be creative can only help.

I’ll point out a few items where I’ve got some experience in that I can add further details. He includes painting on glass here. Decades ago, I was given a commission to paint a large shop window so do have some experience of doing that from doing it in reverse from behind rather than on the front. If you do want to make something lasting, you do need to paint from the front backwards. Any black linework goes on first and the colours go on behind it. If anything, it makes it a lot easier to paint and keep clean although I would advise the young not to do it on house windows because it can take time to scrape off.

His description of painting on tee-shirts is fairly accurate. If you do want to make certain of permanency, you can buy proper fabric paints and even pens that once ironed in and given a solo wash so as not to spread unstuck colour into your other clothes should last the duration of the fabric.

In his selection of equipment at the back of the book, he points out how most felt-tip colours will fade after awhile in direct sunlight. Although I’ve only played with one colour on a painting so far when I needed some straight-lines, there are, albeit a little pricer than normal, pens that won’t fade available and you should check their immunity to ultraviolet light on their blurb which is the real problem.

Objectively, this book should be good for your sprogs as well as you adults out there to get your creative juices and thoughts going. If you have a sense of humour, you can also make it fun. Burgerman also includes info into how to make them into selfies as well as a list of websites who might show your work off. Although it might not beat learning how to draw or paint properly, it might encourage you to develop some skills in that direction.

GF Willmetts

October 2017

(pub: Chronicle Books. 223 page illustrated A5 small paperback. Price: £10.99 (UK), $14.95 (US). ISBN: 978-1-4521-5532-6)

check out website: www.chroniclebooks.com

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

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