Sketching and Doodling

Keeping free and easy in your creativeness is probably the most important issue to overcome and maintain. This is what I have learned myself, yet again, just recently. Yes, I say again, because we are constantly on a learning curve all through our lives. The difference is that we are usually at a different place when we come up against the same issue. You could visualise this as a spiral. We often go full circle with things, but we’re probably the next level up, even if we’re at the same issue.

It is well recognised that we can get bogged down by pressures and restrictions, (external and internal). We can be working on a particular theme or project and lose ourselves in it so far that we’ve forgotten how easy it used to be to create the way we used to outside of that particular project.

Enter the doodling and sketching exercise. At first it may seem trifling and irritating. It may be hard to loosen up. In fact it is hard to loosen up – I found this really hard, and in the first sitting I was a disaster. Why? Because I was trying too hard! The only way I could overcome it was to remove myself from the studio and sit in front on the tv.

So, here is the method:

1. Step outside of your studio or usual creative space.
2. Find somewhere else to set up with paper and pens (or whatever) as a temporary space
3. Put on the tv, the hifi, your ipod, or the radio…
4. Take 3 deep, slow breaths. Relax your shoulders.
5. Clear your mind of its clutter.
6. Get ready to doodle, or sketch.
7. If you need a subject, find some household, fridge, larder, objects, or some photos of something you like such as leaves, flowers, trees, landscapes.
8. Don’t think too much as you sketch. Let your eye guide the hand, with light concentration. Try to keep the style simple and free. It doesn’t have to be strictly representational – you can just fill in areas of colour, or just simple shapes.
9. Enjoy the process. Don’t produce anything for anyone else to see – this is your personal exercise.
10. Remember that if it doesn’t work, put it to one side and come back to it, or start again.

When you have finished your session, however long it takes, put it all to one side and leave it for at least half and hour. When you return to it, look at it objectively, if you can. Can you still see restrictions or barriers to the freedom you’re trying to achieve? If so, can you solve it?

I’d love to hear about your experiences – feel free to share. You may have a different way of loosening up, if so, let me know. I also welcome suggestions for issues to tackle in this blog - keeping creative is a universal subject and there’s so much to explore!

Thanks

Debs

above sketches:

top - "coastal cornfield" ©2008 Deborah Eileen Burrow

bottom -" across the reeds" ©2008 Deborah Eileen Burrow

both of these sketches are for sale at etsy.com

Express Yourself!

This week I draw upon artist Ian Roberts’s wisdom and vision. I can’t put it better than this so I'll use direct quotes. Enjoy his words of truth and encouragement.

In a great book entitled Creative Authenticity, artist Ian Roberts (Ian Roberts website) talks about just jumping in, fears and all, to express ourselves.
"Ultimately, it doesn't matter to the world whether you paint or dance or write," says Roberts. "The world will probably get by without the product of your efforts. But that is not the point. The point is what the inner process of following your creative impulses will do to you. It is clearly about process. Love the work, love the process. Our fascination will pull our attention forward. That, also, will fascinate the viewer."
Roberts explores a number of principles essential for creative authenticity.

• Searching for beauty. Beauty is something that seizes your attention, stops you in your tracks, and silences you. It can be the way light filters through the trees in your backyard or the magnificence of a fifteenth century Italian painting. The subject is irrelevant; it is only a vehicle for your attention, to engage the intensity of your feelings. That intensity is what viewers ultimately respond to.
• Communication. Creativity fundamentally involves expressive power; it is the catching of the "gleams of light" that flash across our mind and forming that vision into something.
• Your home turf. It could be a garden. Or a studio. But you need a creative home base that always stays open for your arrival and bestows on you a readiness to begin your work.
• The Van Gogh syndrome. Don't buy into the myth that creativity is the province of tortured geniuses.
• Your craft, your voice. Practice, practice, practice your craft. It gives you fluency in the creative process and in technique. It's technique that gives life to your creative ideas. Learning your craft opens the channel for your voice to flow.
  
• Showing up. "Nothing determines your creative life more than doing it," says Roberts.
• The dance of avoidance. Starting is always a psychologically messy process, because there are no rules surrounding what you want to do. Setting up a dedicated space for the practice of your craft helps you shift gears directly into your creative process.
• Full-time or part-time. You can't expect to fly consistently at a high level of inspiration.
• Follow something along. If you are going to say something authentic, you need to stick with an idea for a while, an idea that has personal resonance.
• Wagon train and scout. Creativity involves the interplay between where you are and where you see yourself going to keep your expression growing. Always be on the lookout for new paths, and observe how others solve the problems you face.
• Working method. Creativity is in the process, not in the finished results.
• Limits yield intensity. Unrestrained freedom is a myth, and it's not productive.
• Being ready to show. Don't spend your time marketing your creations. If you spend it creating, you are investing your work with the authenticity that will draw others to your efforts...
• You are more than creative enough. The question is not whether you are creative enough but whether you will free yourself to express it.
• Finding poetry in the everyday. Develop the power to see the ordinary as poetic.
• Holding the big picture. Always keep a sense of the whole. That commits you to making the moves that will ultimately represent what you see.