Courageously Creative

Be more creative in your own way

Creating

Creating

Too Much Pizza

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Do you remember hearing your teacher say “Eyes on your own paper” while taking a test?  Did your coach tell you “Don’t look” at your competitor during a sprint since it would slow you down?

Not looking around results in what I call the pizza parlor problem. It’s something you probably see all the time and goes like this: you look around town and realize that there is no place to get pizza. You calculate that the population can support this kind of restaurant, so you lay out some dough, develop a business plan, get the proper permits, lease a store, design a menu, and hire a staff all within a year. Then when you are ready to open, you notice that four others people had the same idea. The area has too much pizza and cannot support five restaurants so you are all in trouble.

In art class, your teacher said to walk around the room to see what everyone else is doing. Looking over your shoulder prevents replicating and is a way that good ideas are transferred. Painters, musicians and writers, are wise to seek out the best in their field who came and succeeded before them.  Looking can be a passive form of collaboration with some of the greatest minds and most talented people who ever lived where the best ideas can be borrowed and the best practices of others can be  incorporate with your own.  To be creative, start by  looking over the shoulders of giants.

The After-Life… for Paintings

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It’s so small you don’t need to measure since the sofa looks tiny in the cavernous furniture store but after you buy it, the size seems to grow. It barely fits in your car and when you get home, the little couch somehow expanded and takes up half the living room.

Have you ever noticed that paintings can change too? They can take on a life of their own. When you finish one late at night, after you clean up your brushes, take one last look before going to bed because it will never be the same again. Something happens when you sleep and in the morning, when you look with fresh eyes, it looks different. More harmonious colors, better composition than you remembered, or sometimes total disaster.  How does it get either better or worse seemingly on its own? And, several days latter it may have changed again. Some physical changes may be part of the explanation; paint may dry lighter or duller, illumination by cool daylight or warm incandescent cause the paint to reflect differently, and its possible elves could have been doing some touching up, but all of these things are not likely to produce enough of a change, to change your mind.

This can be explained by our own standards changing. When we in the midst of creating, we have a vision or are caught up in the fun. We judge by comparing our creation with our vision, but over time our memory fades and we no longer have a standard. Good thing we create something because it’s all that is left afterwards. If you don’t like what you create, don’t tear it up or throw it away until after you had some time for the after-life effects. Ideas change too so sleeping on a good idea can make it better, or not.

– have you seen your creations take on life of their own?

RED: No longer banished

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Much more important than red states or who controls congress. Cadmium reds and yellow are some of the most vibrant colors and can be mixed together to make a perfect Halloween pumpkins orange, but that’s not the scary part, they have a dark side too and along with many other careful artists, I have taken the step of banning them from my palette since they are highly toxic. Light fast colors keep the paintings from fading over time but I don’t want to fade either.

Recently, I found them on the recommended list for a painting class I was taking and decided I would not conform with the rest of the class. An artist who is non-conforming? yeah I guess that’s OK, but how else to capture the rosie flesh tones of the models?

I was ordering some supplies from Daniel Smith and noticed an innovation. They formulated a new series of Cadmium “Hues” and say they provide “the richness of classic cadmium colors without the toxicity of heavy metal pigments”. Well I ordered some and can’t wait to try them, but I probably still won’t fit in at class.

Calculated risks: Start in the tide pool before venturing into the ocean

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Calculated risks: Start in the tide pool before venturing into the ocean

Creating something new is risky! People may laugh; your idea may not work, costing you time and money. A simple step of calculating the risk beforehand can help you to understand what you are stepping into. Decide what is the worst thing that can happen? And what is its likelihood?

Start in the tide pool before venturing into the ocean. What is the harm of picking up a pencil and making a drawing? You risk wearing down your pencil and wasting a sheet of paper.

There is little risk in singing in the shower, or in your car on your commute, why not try to make up your own words. There is little risk in practicing a speech in front of some close friends, little risk in molding a piece of clay, or writing an essay. Find a low risk environment and use it as test laboratory and see what grows. Practice swimming in the shallows before getting in over your head.