You were born with a creative spark inside. Do you look at yourself now and wonder if the spark has gone out? Ignite that inner fire with the 30 engaging exercises, fun activities, inspirational images, and motivating ideas in this book. Learn what your Little Spark of creative passion looks like, how to capture it, and how to make room for it in your life. Read the book cover-to-cover and use it as a month-long creative roadmap, or just dip into...

We instantly recognize many of their faces from the world's most iconic artworks—but just who was Picasso's 'Weeping Woman'? Or the burglar in Francis Bacon's oeuvre? Why was Grace Jones covered in graffiti? Far from posing silently, muses have brought emotional support, intellectual energy, career-changing creativity, and practical help to artists. However, the perception of the muse is that of a passive, powerless model (usually young, attractive,...

"Creativity comes into play in just about any field. Looking at situations from different perspectives, finding new uses for old things, combining disparate ideas or ingredients or even colors--all are creative endeavors. And when writer Ann Byle became a chicken owner, she began to look at her hens with new interest and the keen eye of an artist. Even though chicken-tending proved to have its own challenges, Byle discovered that her feathered friends...

"A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories."--From publisher description. "Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the greatest English novel. After gaining admission to Oxford,...

Eve Laing, celebrated artist, once the muse of legendary painter and "monstre sacré" Florian Kis;, is a photorealist painter of flowers at the peak of her career, with her work in international galleries and museums. Now Eve is embarking on her most ambitious work to date--seven enormous, elaborate panels of the world's deadliest plants. In psychic preparation, she has taken a wrecking ball to her opulent high-wire life, jettisoning her marriage...

Los Angeles, 1978. When Romy, a gifted young artist dies in mysterious circumstances, her art-star husband quickly replaces her with another young artist, Paz. Paz tries to make her own creative space in her new life, but she is haunted by Romy's presence. As disturbing things begin to take place and people question what really happened to Romy, Paz becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth.

Have you ever wished you had a professional coach who could encourage your creative pursuits, help structure your efforts, and cheer you on? Coaching the Artist Within is the first book to explain the techniques that creativity coaches use to help their clients survive and thrive in the arts. Designed to help any person become more creative, this book offers a complete program for developing the habits that make creating an everyday routine. The book’s...

On a stormy night two hundred years ago, a young woman sat in a dark house and dreamed of her life as a writer. She longed to follow the path her own mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, had started down, but young Mary Shelley had yet to be inspired. As the night wore on, Mary grew more anxious. The next day was the deadline that her friend, the poet Lord Byron, had set for writing the best ghost story. After much talk of science and the secrets of life,...

"What happens when a creative girl makes a massive mess? She blames it on a narwhal, of course! But what happens when a narwhal magically appears to defend himself? A hilarious battle of wits begins."--