One Artist Journal by Orly Avineri I’ve finished reading Orly Avinery’s self-published book One Artist’s Journal and wanted to share my thoughts with you guys.

I am a big fan of Orly’s artwork, published in art journal form on her blog. She is great with words and often have something profoundly beautiful or thought provoking to say. Without my love of her blog presence I would never have splurged on her book. As so often these days, the blog precedes and markets the book and/or author enough to tickle my curiosity… I think it’s something to take note of if you want to publish/write/sell – and don’t already have a blog of your own… Think about starting one!

I know I will look through this book many times, and I’ve read every page (there is quite a lot of text overlays over the painted pages), but to my surprise I was a little disappointed too. I wanted to take a closer look and “figure out” Orly’s pages, but learned that each page/painting is “enhanced” with a digital doodle on the computer. This makes it hard to figure out how anything is done (what layer/thing came first?) and to me, it’s confusing. It’s simply something I would want to know about before I bought the book. I’m not sure I think of it as cheating to digitally alter your art, but since I myself haven’t tried drawing with a tablet I’m not sure I like it. Or simply put: I don’t think Orly’s artwork needs it. Not sure that it adds to the whole of the book either… But it’s there, so okay. Orly explains what and why in the introduction, which is good, and each page has added text which makes this book into a illustrated story, and I really like that a lot.

I love reading and getting to know the thoughts behind artwork and images. To some it might be distracting, but I often think that text adds. It adds depth and meaning beyond my own interpretation, but it doesn’t interfere with my relationship with the artwork itself. Maybe it’s because I love words/writing equal to images/looking, and need both to be happy.

This book slows me down, and encourages mind traveling and heart gazing. That’s why I truly recommend you to take a look at it if you’re into these kinds of things… When my copy isn’t out on my desk I’m going to let it live next to my copy of the book Truth will measure by Jesse Reno, kind of a similar book that I can look at again and again and see new things each time… BTW, this book is self published so you should get it directly from Orly’s site here. And if you haven’t already, go read her blog, it’s full of inspiration!

** Previous book reviews by me