The Art of Personal Imagery

by Corey Moortgat

Express yourself—and celebrate your life—with collage.

The Art of Personal Imagery introduces a fresh approach to collage, one that blends traditional methods with innovative new techniques for capturing your favorite moments and most treasured memories in your artwork. Step by step, author Corey Moortgat teaches you the secrets to adding visual and emotional depth to your collage:

Commemorate special occasions...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1581809905
• ISBN13: 9781581809909
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: North Light Books
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.4" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

Not just for scrapbookers

And to think I almost missed this book because I thought it was just another cluttered-looking volume about scrapbooking. Shudder! This is a fantastically useful art book for anyone who wants to learn about painting great backgrounds, altering photographs, using personal symbols, and more. I highly recommend it to beginning artists and experienced painters who want to give their work a newer and more exciting look!

A great springboard for a beginning art journalist, and an eye opener for the experienced.

I have never heard of Corey prior to picking up this book. Her artistic style is fun and the book is eye opening. Corey comes across as a very introspective and deep thinking person and she helps the reader to explore symbolism in their own artwork and give prompts and exercises which I found enlightening. She then offers up her own creative techniques to help you create your own art journals. If you have been wanting to start an art journal but feel intimidated or overwhelmed, then this is a great book for you. If you are an experienced art journalist and want to explore the symbolism in your own work, while being inspired at the same time, then this is a great book for you!

Collage with meaning

I love this book because the author shares her process of creating meaning in her collages. I have most of the major books on this style of art because I find it fascinating. I've also taken workshops from several of the authors and produced some pretty good looking finished pieces. Curiously though the finished pieces I've created leave me cold emotionally and I now realize it's because I wasn't bringing my own meaning to them. This author pushes you to find and express your own meanings and your own style. If you really read this book (not just leaf through the beautiful artwork) it will lead you into discovering your own meaning and style. Additionally, she provides methods not covered in other books on collage including incorporating modern photos. For my money, this is one of the best books on creating that I have purchased.

I love this Book!

I just recieved this book and I have to say that I am very impressed with the overall quality of the book. The artwork itself is amazing...it is not generic like a lot of the collage work you see today. The author uses her own style and personal imagery to guide you through many of the process oriented examples in the book. I like a book that has a good balance of "how to" and inspiring eye candy. As another reviewer mentioned, if you don't like her style, you may find her samples somewhat similar, but I personally feel as if you learn more about her as an artist...she is not trying to do 10 different "styles", she is being true to her self and her art. As a photographer, I am always interested in new ways to incorporate my own photos into my art journals and I found this book to be wonderfully motivating.

expressive art journaling

I am absolutely loving this book. I can hardly wait to apply Corey's techniques to my own personal art projects. I'm not a very good writer, more of a visual artist, but her book shows you how to incorporate a little or a lot of written word. The quality of the book is excellent, spill proof cover! And the photos are all very inspiring. She encourages the reader to search for his/her own "style" and explains how to go about doing just that.