Creativity is not just for kids, artists, and homemakers, but for everyone who needs to create a degree of change.

Need help expressing ideas? Step toward a new creative direction through The Artist Within: A Guide to Becoming Creatively Fit. The book offers a series of creativity workouts that cover the basics: supplies, motivation, inspiration along with specific exercises to ignite your mind by creating art projects.

But The Artist Within goes deeper in helping you understand the effect images, symbols and colors have on our subconscious. You’ll learn a new way of seeing, an awareness of the colors around you, and the colors inside you.

Ferré  bases all of this on the eight principles of design:

“Each side of the brain has a different voice. For 90 percent of us, our days are spent tuned to our left-brain voice. The left brain is closer to our consciousness because it is responsible for so many of our daily tasks... We spend most of our days at the mercy of our to-do list. We concern ourselves with deadlines and perimeters... Just as muscles get larger the more they are exercised, imagine your left brain as an overdeveloped hulking muscle with your itty-bitty little right brain trying to peek out from behind. To strengthen that right brain “muscle,” to give it a voice, we can create a new awareness of the art that is our life and we can use simple, creative exercises to connect to our artist within."

Use the book’s diagnostic tools to survey your interests based on the eight design principles. The creativity workouts will target your weak points and the dream collage exercise will help build strength in new creative avenues.

“When your brain is creatively fit it will give you strength that you never knew existed. Instead of being intimidated or overwhelmed by what life is handing you, it springs into action, imagining how you can create change. Imagine what life will look like after you create that change…”

Physically, this book is a riot of various media and concepts for working with clay, jewelry sculpture, paper, paint, creating mandalas and stretching your imagination. The book oozes energy with its unconventional and splashy graphic design.

Use The Artist Within and the eight principles of design to harness your goals, enhance your daily routine and to create or regain balance in your life.... (or you could watch another YouTube...).