Setting a Creative Speed Limit

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Art, Daily doodle, Journal, Writing

Yesterday, I learned that being spontaneous doesn’t require rushing through a drawing or a piece of writing. Speeding up the process through scribbling or stream of consciousness writing can be a way to get started, but it doesn’t mean you can’t slow the process down for the sake of taking a little more control.

The speed limit I had set for my professional work is extremely slow, and it seemed to be getting slower and slower every week, because it is becoming more and more detailed. This blog is a way of breaking away from that trend and opening up my imagination to new possibilities and techniques.

I’m finding that I am in control of the speed at which I work. The process can be sped up or slowed down at any point. I believe the trick is in being conscious of it and deliberately choosing a speed that feels comfortable at every moment.

Writer’s Block – Fighting Through It

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Art, Daily doodle, Journal, mind stream, random words, stream of consciousness, Writing, writing a novel, writing exercise

Whether you are writing a novel, making a scrapbook or greeting card, or painting a piece of art to hang on a wall, I think everyone occasionally has the experience of wanting to create something, but not knowing what to create. In making one of these blog posts, I usually start out drawing, and the writing comes to me as I draw. Sometimes I don’t know what to draw, like today. I started in the center of the page and began to scribble, hoping an idea would come to me. However, well into a frenzied scribble, all that came into my mind was “Where am i going what am i doing?”

If this were purely a writing exercise, I could have written random words that entered my mind, stream of consciousness style. I think the results would be comparable. In this case, I wasn’t satisfied with what I had done. I had created the scribble so fast and without any effort at all, and I felt like I hadn’t learned anything. So I created another drawing. I returned to poppies as a subject matter, because I liked my results yesterday.

Then I went back to the original scribble, and I thought, what if I slow down a little and add some detail to make it more interesting? Maybe it was simply unfinished. Perhaps the frenzied scribble was just a starting point – an ice breaker. So, I slowed down and began to add detail to the shapes I had drawn.

It boils down to simply getting started in any random way, and continuing from there, wherever your imagination carries you. When the imagination is unlocked, no blocks have the power to contain it.

Finding the Eye of the Storm

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Art, Daily doodle, Journal, Writing

Hurricane Irene is gone. The power flickered a few times, but we didn’t lose it entirely here. I’m relieved it’s over. The hurricane inspired the drawing this morning. If you have trouble reading the verse it reads, “Sometimes finding your true center is like finding the eye of the storm.” Life can be so busy at times that it can seem like you’re getting tossed around in a storm of activity. The challenge is to find that calm center. Every hurricane has an eye, and so does every day.

I decided to do a second drawing today. I thought, why stop at one?

We are now experiencing the calm after the storm.

Filtering out the clutter

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Art, Daily doodle

For those of you who have trouble reading upside down, here is the verse from the image: “Filtering out the clutter allows the truly meaningful ideas to reveal themselves in all their complexity, simplicity and sometimes paradoxical beauty.”

I filmed myself drawing this morning. I am considering posting the video on Youtube. I might make it private, just for readers of this blog to access. If anyone is interested in seeing video of these drawings, or if you have suggestions, please let me know. I could post all 12 and a half minutes of raw video in real time, or I could speed up the video to play in a couple of minutes. I watched the real time video and it gets boring after a couple of minutes, but if there’s enough interest, I might just try it.

This morning, there were many things running through my mind as I was drawing. I decided to keep the composition simple, and that’s where the writing came from. It was my attempt at cutting through the clutter of all the random thoughts as I searched for something to write that would have meaning.

When I finished the drawing and scanned the image, I noticed there were a couple of spots in the center of the flower that I left blank. I simply forgot to fill them with the pattern I had filled the others with. I almost decided to fill those spaces in, but I had already decided the drawing was complete. I resisted the urge to go back and fill those spaces in. Maybe that’s part of letting go of inhibitions. Allowing freedom also means embracing imperfections in the design.

 

All Good Paths Lead to Growth

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Art, Daily doodle, Journal, Writing

As this image was developing, the words began to form, “If you take them far enough, all paths lead to growth.”

When I was about finished with the drawing, I started to wonder if this is really true. There is also the path of destruction. The weather is so calm right now, and it was beautiful yesterday. The stars were out last night. Everything is perfectly still outside, yet hurricane Irene is on the way. Maybe the verse should be changed to “If you take them far enough, all good paths lead to growth.” Then again, perhaps the original thought was correct, because destruction can lead to growth. Whenever I write something like this, it’s part of my creative process to take it apart and reconstruct it in different ways to see if there’s a better way of capturing the sentiment I’m trying to convey. But that will come later. These exercises are more about allowing the imagination the freedom to grow. That is the path I’m on now, and I intend to take it far enough.

Reaching for the Sun

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Art, Daily doodle, Journal

As hurricane Irene approaches, I had the urge to draw something sunny. The yellow coneflowers are in bloom, and they inspired this drawing.

It takes some effort for flowers to lean toward the sunshine. I have this theory that if we studied plants closely enough and could understand why they behave the way they do, we might discover they have emotions just as deep and strong as people. They do not possess the ability or desire to communicate the way humans do, but they know how to get what they need from their environment to survive. There must be some sort of survival instinct and motivation for them to lean toward the sun beyond simple chemical processes. I hope the flowers in bloom survive the hurricane this weekend!

Art’s Many Worlds

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Art, Daily doodle, Design, Journal, Spiral

Today, the image is a little more abstract.

The spiral is an image that speaks to the infinite – and in art there is an infinite number of worlds to explore and an infinite number of interpretations of those worlds. As I was drawing this image, I kept wanting to make spirals. As I drew them, I didn’t really understand why I felt compelled to do so – I just drew them without judgement.

Reaching for the Creative Sky

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Art, Daily doodle

Today, I had a little stage fright, knowing my drawing would appear on the blog. Rather than dwelling on that fact, I picked up my Sharpie and started drawing on a fresh piece of paper. Within seconds a tree was forming, and I knew I would be OK. I think the largest challenge I face with these doodles is what to draw. Once an image is forming on the paper, my mind begins to wander, thinking about what the drawing wants to communicate.

As I was drawing, the words were coming to me, but it took me a minute to figure out where to place the words within the composition. Actually, the words that originally came to me were “Trees reach for the sky and grasp a small piece of it.” However, when I came to the place where the word “small” would go, I realized the space was demanding a larger word than small, so I went with it and changed the word to “large”. Now, I like this version better. I’m learning I just have to make the best of each moment as I’m drawing these free flowing, unplanned sketches.

 

Free at Last

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Art, Daily doodle

This bird cage sketch was inspired by feedback I received on the blog. I’m learning to create without criticism. A few minutes of total freedom every day can perform wonders for opening up the imagination. I plan to continue with these sketches every day for a while. I’m enjoying it.

When in Doubt, Draw

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Art, Journal, Writing

Today, I began with the self criticism again. I had started to draw a bird and a wing, and the self doubt creeped in again. I wasn’t satisfied with my results. That’s when I wrote “Am I flying now, or am I simply losing feathers?” I knew when I was writing the words that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking that way, yet I was. I read a book about mindfulness once, Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness & Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, & Panic by Jeffrey Brantley and Jon Kabat-Zinn. One of the mindfulness exercises involved allowing yourself to have thoughts and not judge those thoughts. You simply allow them to be, and you acknowledge them as you are meditating. So I had the thought, acknowledged it in the drawing and moved on with more drawing. I came to the realization that whenever I feel doubt about the work, I need to just keep drawing, and things may resolve themselves (or not), but there’s always a new day and a new drawing to move on to next.