Art journal covers and a magazine blather

(yes, those are my toes at the bottom...I hope they're clean!)

This is an idea I got from the Quilting Arts magazine that I subscribe to. For all the faults that popular artycrafty magazines tend to have (see below*) I find Quilting Arts quite useful as a springboard for ideas. This was an idea for book covers and the above photo is only a start.

I had scraps left over so that led to other one below which will have a lot more busy, fiddly bits on it, the above is more of a "clean-line" design.

*My critique of arty-crafty magazines:
PLEASE don't get me wrong; I don't want to put down these magazines. They are great for making a variety of fields accessible to a layperson (and being unschooled in art, I am one myself) and especially good for getting started in a new field.

We have two "popular" ones in South Africa ("popular" in the sense that you can find them at most supermarkets, as opposed to being a specialist magazine you have to go to a bookshop to find, or you have to order), Threads and Crafts and Craftwise.

Both of these magazines cater more to the craft side of the market than the art side. I am glad that we have them and don't want to criticise, but I find them limiting and frustrating in their limitations: I think the issue is they leave me wanting *more*. Quilting Arts has some of these limits too, although to a lesser extent, probably mostly because it's American and a lot of their products and ideas are newer to me than the South African ones.

I personally find these types of magazines have an over-emphasis on promotion of *products* that they can sell (because, of course, money makes the whole business go around) . Buy this ink and that stamp or thread and this gadget which will magically make you a "better" artist. Success is guaranteed because the product is so superior, it's idiot-proof. Making art is fraught with failure, so a product that virtually guarantees a lower failure rate... well, what sheep we are.

They also have a tendency to follow "fads" eg scrapbooking, beading (because that will get them greater readership and sell more copies). I guess the magazine would not exist otherwise. But it gets tiring.

Lastly they have a tendency to cater to people who need every step spelt out for them so they can duplicate a result exactly. A "paint-by-numbers" approach. Again this is great for a beginner, but beyond that... boring.

It sounds hugely insulting (and if you've read this far, you're most unlikely to fall in this category) but most people need to be told what to do every step of the way. Haven't you experienced this...? You think: "What if I tried it this way" and you make something and then people gasp and say "You're so CREATIVE - how did you know to do that?" - and the truth is you didn't *know* anything, you just tried something out - and that, I suppose, is creativity, but it seems to me, creativity is a mindset more than some terribly special "gift" that some people have and others don't. And most people are sheep; we are socialised that way. "Write your 'A' this way and not that way, a tree is brown and green and not pink and purple." We need mass education to teach masses of people to cope in our increasingly complicated world, but that mass education can be stifling of creativity. That is nothing new, but I am suprised at how many people never realise this fact, and never venture outside of what they learned in school. Perhaps they are just not driven to experiment, driven to make something out of nothing. Perhaps I don't understand, because I always want to look at something and think "how could I use that in a different way, or see it differently?" It makes me less "efficient" because I go off on a lot of tangets, but those tangents are just so interesting! :)

Haha, that turned into quite a rant. Whatever. I buy magazines, because they give me ideas; they stimulate me to think about things I would not otherwise have thought about. So 'Thank You' to magazine editors and writers everywhere - you may have to pay lip service to what will sell (we all have to eat!), but we all know there is so much more beyond that.