Arts & The Craft: Rachel, the Pickety Witch

Whether for the witnesses or the creators, art has always been about the irrepressible spirit of our imagination. It is paramount that we expand our visual vocabulary, not shrink it. We must open ourselves up to see, consider, explore, and create outside of the straight lines, hard rules, and whitewalled boxes. Once we recognize the extraordinary power of our imagination and our art, magic will be no more than a fingertip away.

I hope you take up this book’s encouragement to tear down the wall the old men built when they first decided to keep art and magic from coming together.

Nick Bantock (British Columbia, Canada) is the author and artist of the New York Times bestselling Griffin and Sabine series. He has authored over thirty books, eleven of which have appeared on bestseller lists. His works have been translated into fifteen languages, and over five million have been sold worldwide.

Introduction

I’ve come to believe that we suffer from a number of rifts within ourselves. … There are, no doubt, multiple reasons for our sense of alienation and yet there is one that repeatedly preoccupies me. … I tried to voice my nagging sense that we have almost lost “the image” as a direct means of thought. —Nick Bantock in The Artful Dodger

I am going to share with you a secret: when I start a book, the introduction is technically the first thing I write, but it’s also the very last thing I write. There’s the initial idea of the book that happens when I conceive it, and then there’s what happens after it spews forth from my head Athena-style. Each book ends up being both what I had hoped it would be and something I never could have imagined. I love the process and the revelations it brings.

I find the same is true for my art. There is the idea in my head, and then there’s what that idea becomes once it has been brought forth into the world through my own visual alchemy.

In modern society we tend to think the creative process goes like this:

1. Have an idea. 2. Make that idea happen somehow. 3. The end result is a carbon copy of that idea in your head.