"To those engaged in making art, an authentic voice is the most crucial yet most difficult ability to come by. Why does so much conspire to hide what is ultimately the closest, simplest thing of all? Creative Authenticity outlines 16 principles that will help you peel back the fears, misconceptions, "shoulds" and confusion around courageous creative expression. You'll discover: you are more than creative enough; talent has little to do with your success; the van Gogh syndrome is one of the most destructive myths of what it takes to creative; the dance of avoidance upon arriving in the studio is inevitable- learn to see through it and begin; the necessity of finding a truthful relationship with your work so it feeds you, not torments you."--Publisher description.

Create Better Compositions by Design The path to better painting begins with Mastering Composition. This effective guide blends clear, visual instruction with 5 step-by-step demonstrations to show you how to plan and paint your best work yet. Composition is the key, and here you'll learn to design paintings with new skill and confidence. It all begins with the armature or structure of the picture plane. Every great painting has one, and you'll see through several famous examples exactly how the Old Masters used armatures to create movement, narrative, harmony and fluidity. Based on these examples, you'll practice what you've learned following a series of hands-on demonstrations. Once you understand the basic principles of design, you'll be amazed at how quickly and effectively your compositions come together. Soon you will be painting more boldly and confidently than ever before with less reworking and overworking. Whether you're a beginner looking for basic instruction or a more advanced painter troubleshooting a specific problem, the proven methods in this book will work for you. Ideal for all mediums, Mastering Composition gives you the knowledge you need to create powerful paintings out of every subject.

In Hashtag Authentic, social media guru Sara Tasker provides tips, advice, and guidance on how to turn your personal Instagram account into a profitable creative outlet. Since setting up her Instagram account (@me_and_orla) while on maternity leave in 2013, Sara has become a celebrated influencer and iPhoneographer, and through her calm, atmospheric, and authentic style has garnered legions of followers. Here, Sara presents the lessons she has learned along the way. Sara's nurturing voice and enchanting photography provide guidance on: storytelling, with tips on finding your own visual style and personal niche; making pictures, including composing for Instagram, finding the best light, and getting the most out of your camera phone; archiving your life, with tips organized by themes like Craft & Making, Family & Pets, and Food & Ingredients; and sharing your world, detailing the keys to Instagram success and beyond. Hashtag Authentic is both an inspiring manual and an interactive tool for finding an online voice, growing a tribe, and becoming an influencer.

Fishing for elephants explains the creative processes of art and life with a conversational, humorous, and informative voice. While it is geared towards artists, it is not a how to paint something to look like something book. It's a how to think for yourself, move forward, get out of your comfort zone, get out of your own way, define your voice, refine your voice, focus on those characteristics of creating that are authentic to you and try new directions kind of book for all levels. Designed to help you discover new artistic directions and open the neural pathways to creative problem-solving, Fishing for elephants is presented in two halves. The first contains everything you need to know about the process of creativity; what keeps you from it, what it is, how to use it and how to get unstuck. It's flipping all your light switches on kind of stuff. The truth is anyone can be more creative with just a few easy steps. The second half, VoiceFinding, is the first half put into action for artists who want to get to their core authentic self, or just want to push out a little. There are more than 150 examples and unconventional exercises designed to break this process into bite-sized chunks so your genius skill-set will expand exponentially. It's year-long class in a workbook format, with areas to answer creative challenges, set goals, write artist's statements, sketch out ideas, apply processes like free association, mind maps, reportage, mixed-media, and continuous line drawing in new and thought-challenging ways. Written by nationally recognized, award-winning artist and creative coach, Larry Moore.

Brands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed “greening” of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture. Authentic™ maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and personal relationships—what Banet-Weiser refers to as “brand cultures.” Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the normalization of a feminized “self-brand” in social media, the brand culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as “New Age Spirituality” and “Prosperity Christianity,”and the culture of green branding and “shopping for change.” In a culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls and department stores, buying a cup of “fair-trade” coffee is a political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts, Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the “authentic” and branding practices. But brand cultures are also contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities, leading Authentic™ to articulate a politics of ambivalence, creating a lens through which we can see potential political possibilities within the new consumerism.

The purpose of this volume is to broaden scholars' analytical perspective by placing the creative industries in frameworks that compare and contrast them with other kinds of entities, organizations, and social forms that mix creativity and production. In other words, this volume aims to set out an emerging agenda for the study of creativity in the cultural and media industries. Although this work focuses on the media and cultural industries, they are investigated in the context of other groups and organizations connecting forms of creativity with an explicit emphasis on turning ideas into concrete practices and products. The originality of this book lies in (1) presenting a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective that develops a new framework and analytical concepts to understand the notion of creativity in the media and cultural industries, and (2) providing a series of fresh empirically based studies of the process of creativity in fields such as advertising, fashion, animation, and pop culture. This comparative move is taken in order to generate new insights about the particular features of the creative industries and new questions for future analysis.

Open any other book on creativity, and you will hear the clichéd rallying cries of current creative culture: Be True to Yourself! Find Your Voice! Express Your Authentic Self! This book is different. This book will not tell you to “Be true to yourself,” but will implore you to “Humble yourself.” This book will not repeat the slogan, “Find your Voice,” but will ask you to consider how your moral weaknesses are inhibiting your creativity. Examining the current creative culture, The Humble Creative argues that creativity can easily become disordered by vices that Christianity has long understood, but most have forgotten; vices such as vainglory, envy, sloth, anger, lust of the eyes, greed, and pride. The Humble Creative integrates the long-held Christian understanding of moral vice with creativity, providing an accessible exploration of individual vices and their role in disordering creativity—ultimately offering exercises for moral and creative formation. Written in an accessible way, this book explores the stories of several individuals whose creativity have become disordered by vice, introducing the reader to the often overlooked relationship between the moral character of the creative and the successful pursuit of flourishing creativity.

A high level of pay doesn't necessarily mean a high level of satisfaction. Written in a fun and inspirational way, this book will help lawyers find a way to happiness in their career and life. Starting with self examination, readers will be able to analyze their personal values and then create their own personal fulfillment plan. Create a step-by-step plan for life and career that will get you back on track with your personal definition of happiness with this important book.

Organizations today are awash in change. Managing change requires leaders to focus simultaneously on managing the business and providing effective leadership to the people. More often than not, it is the focus on the people side that loses out. This book offers a framework for understanding the issues and competencies that contribute to effective leadership during times of change. Its purpose is to help leaders determine how to choose and move among a variety of managerial approaches--to help them see what's working, what's not working, and what's missing. In this way, leaders can more clearly assess their impact and learn how to meet the demands of both managing the business and leading the people.

An artist's unique voice is their calling card. It's what makes each of their works vital and particular. But developing such singular artistry requires effort and persistence. Bestselling author, artist, and illustrator Lisa Congdon brings her expertise to this guide to the process of artistic self-discovery. Featuring advice from Congdon herself and interviews with a roster of established artists, illustrators, and creatives, this one-of-a-kind book will show readers how to identify and nurture their own visual identity, navigate the influence of artists they admire, push through fear and insecurity, and appreciate the value of their personal journey.