The Artist's Mentor: Inspiration from the World's Most Creative Minds

My first copy was given to me by a vey good friend, who is also an artist. I'm an artist. Everything I have thought about as I journey through life being an artist is covered in this book. It seems that all artists share the same thoughts and concerns and this book puts it all into understandable context. it is clearly written, interesting, not academic in style, and fun to read. I read it three times on a recent European trip. I filled the pages with notes and observations. I couldn't stop reading it. Then I lost the book. So I bought a second one from Amazon. I've recommended it to students and friends who are artists. My new copy is also filled with notes. It is the best book about art that I've read, even though it is little and unassuming. What do artists think about stuff? It's in here.

A bunch of (sometimes interesting) quotes (sort of ) arranged in subject (sort of) themed chapters. I didn't find this to be interesting or thought provoking . I suppose this compendium of quotes approach might appeal to some. To me it was boring because there was no thematic narrative, no sense of an author present, no journey undertaken. It's just a hodge podge of quotes about art . Obviously, the book was compiled by reading or flipping through lots of art books and jotting down selected quotes and then arranging them, roughly, according to subject matter subsets.

This book isn't quite what I expected. That doesn't mean it isn't exactly what it says, just not what I was looking for. It is a book of quotes basically by famous artist throughout history. So if that will inspire you...so will this book.

The main reason I purchased this was for a course I was taking, I purchased the eBook so that I could easily search key terms and so forth... However, this book has no page numbers whatsoever so it was extremely challenging to reference in class. Ultimately I had to borrow the traditional paperback from a classmate, so essentially I wasted my money. However, if you are reading this for leisure then please disregard this review.

It's OK. I may use it as a resource, but will probably give away.

neat book, interesting quotes,covers a lot of ground,neat to get 'advice' from the variety of artists they list

on time and as expected

As a professional artist, I appreciated that the book attempts to address the emotional concerns of artists in the current art market and avoids many of the cliches intended to motivate amateur painters. Somehow I'm comforted knowing that even famous artists had difficulty overcoming that inexplicable resistance to getting into the studio and starting. Yet the book seemed a little flat, not as inspiring as I'd hoped.