a book
What It Is
Lynda Barry · 2008 · 216 pages
Lynda Barry’s bestselling treatise on creativity, What It Is, is now available in paperback
How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? What is an image? What is the past? For decades, these questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry’s compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. Barry’s What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive mind who wishes to write or to remember.
In this exploratory workbook, confessional, and memoir each page is a full-color collage that is a gentle guide to the creative process packed full ofswirling collaged images with pen and ink drawings on Barry’s signature legal paper. Barry’s award winning book is an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”
recommended by 2 people
sourced from public statements
Austin Kleon
“Readers basically have two reactions to this book: ‘WTF is this???’ or ‘OMG I am now obsessed with Lynda Barry.’ (Sometimes it’s both, in that order: ‘WTF???’ and then ‘OMG!!!’) Simply one of my all-time favorite books and one of the biggest influences on my own creative practice. What more can I say?”↗
Jeff Tweedy
“If you want to write or draw or just liberate yourself to make stuff without a judgmental a–hole of an observing ego, this book — organized like a grade-school workbook — is a great place to start. I keep it handy as a reminder that creativity often requires little more than staying out of one’s own way.”↗