We were sent the Be A Super Awesome Artist book for the purposes of this post. All images and opinions are our own. 

This week we are looking at a new book – Be A Super Awesome Artist which is being featured in a special Blog Tour Week. If you’ve never heard of a blog tour, it’s where a group of book bloggers are sent a book to read and review and each day one of them shares their review. Today is my day, so here goes!

Be A Super Awesome Artist is a fantastic new book for creative kids. It uses real examples of art for inspiration for art projects you can do at home with the family. It features 20 exciting art challenges to help you create your own masterpieces and if you take up the challenge, you’ll be painting like Pollock, doodling like Duchamp and creating like Kahlo in no time!

There are a number of famous artists featured in Be A Super Awesome Artist and it features lots of different art styles and techniques. There’s a great section on pencils and pencil drawing, which tells you all about the different grades of pencil as well as a beginners guide to shading, which is extremely helpful if you’re starting to get into drawing, as well as sections on colour and paint.

Be A Super Awesome Artist is a really fantastic guide on how to create some art of your own, based on some of the styles of famous artists. It’s not just a case of replicating the old masters, but you can learn more about the pop art of Lichtenstein, the creative combinations John Stezaker uses; as well as the beautiful artworks Chris Ofili creates out of elephant dung (yes, you read that correctly). Each page is a new adventure in art.

We picked a challenge from the book and one chilly afternoon, we stepped outside to create our artworks. Together we flicked through the book, I’m a big fan of Jackson Pollock and went to view his exhibition in Tate Liverpool a few years ago. I’m also a big fan of The Stone Roses and their Pollock inspired album art, so we decided to get messy.

We read more about how Pollock created his artworks – he would dip his brushes in pots of paint and then drip the paint all over his canvas. Although we didn’t have a canvas, we did have some pieces of cardboard which we could use instead. We decided to roughly paint over the cardboard and then pick some other colours to drip and flick over our cardboard canvases.

This was tremendous fun. We did it outside to minimise the indoor mess; using poster paints meant that any splashes on my plastic table could be easily washed off. But the main aim of it was to have a bit of fun with it; learn a little bit more about art and that art isn’t always about doing perfect drawings, sometimes art can be a bit wild and a lot of fun.

Be A Super Awesome Artist costs £9.99 and is currently available in hardback. It’s written by Henry Carroll who studied photography at the Royal College of Art. His writing about art is simple, straightforward and encourages and inspires children to get creative. The book is illustrated by Rose Blake, an award winning illustrator and artist from London.

Be A Super Awesome Artist is available from all good book sellers and directly from Laurence King Publishing.