Fishing for elephants: Insights and exercises to inspire authentic creativity

by Larry Moore, Scott Christensen (Foreword), Jeff Matz (Contributor)

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.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2018

Reviews

[Brigitte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll be using this book for years. It’s really a workbook jampacked with exercises to find your authenticity and intent as a visual artist. This is a gem of a book.

[MeKenzie Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a heavy read for me. While Larry Moore tried his best to divide and subdivide several subjects and unite them in the end with the suggested exercises to get you to recognize your authentic artistic self, I feel that with his well-intentioned reminders, it became repetitive rather quickly. Despite that, I loved his sense of humor; especially, on the notion that you don't need a super rare specific brush, like Harry Potter's two feet wand uniquely crafted with pink glitters and an unicorn's hair to be a successful artist. It's freeing that way to know that. And I think that's what made this book great for me and made it easier for me to overlook the repetitive part. If you need some freshening ideas spiced with some humor and a different, distinctive perspective to help you to liberate yourself and become even more authentic with your art, then give this book a try!

[Valeria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super practical book to remind us that creativity is not about making an effort to be original; its a decision to put our judgemental self in brackets for a while any given day, even among all the kaos of a busy daily schedule, and letting our inner self be.

I did almost all the exercises the author suggests and I could feel the discomfort at the beginning but I realised that I was equipped to pull it through because the book steps prepare you along the way.

In short, this book is a beautiful path to follow to explore all the magical things in you. Your medium doesn’t matter.

[Terry O Kristiansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

compelling

Anyone interested in learning about art but also self actualization would enjoy this writing style. Humerous, I enjoyed the writing style and today’s references. Unpretentious. Learned much and just enjoyed reading the contents. Lots of homework, love it.

Thank you Larry Moore

[Colleen Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful for the artist wanting to take it to the next level.