"Storytelling Art Studio" is an art instruction book about making mixed media art that tells a story. The author has 10 projects that cover different aspects of story telling: using color to convey emotion, creating characters and sidekicks, setting a scene, creating conflict, adding text, using symbolism, repeating a motif, selecting a title, and such. She started each project by providing a creativity prompt to get you thinking and suggesting reference material for you to gather. Then she provided a step-by-step demonstration project. She broke the project down into simple steps with useful instructional text and photographs for each step.

She used paint chips (like for wall paint) to help select a color scheme. She usually used small wood panels (6"x6" to 8"x10") and acrylic paints for the projects as well as gel pens, ink pens, photographs, card stock, etc., for the mixed media aspect. Each project used a wide variety of materials, but the finished project is relatively small (which I like). Overall, I found her take on telling stories through art to be pretty basic (as you're creating just one scene) but interesting and easy to follow.

From the size of a canvas to the color of paint, Storytelling Art Studio is an excellent resource for those interested in a different kind of crafting. I love how they show with pictures how to tell a story using just colors and then graduate to different shapes, figures and textures. Really excellent for a novice just beginning to dabble in the crafts.