Creating art to bring joy into our ilves
Last week I came across a new Netflix documentary called The Creative Brain. I was really curious about it. Inventors, scientists, artists talk about what they think creativity is and they describe their creative process. I found it tremendously inspiring and hope it will inspire you too. 🙂
So here are a few ideas I loved.
The famous Danish architect Bjarke Ingels says that he tries to materialize as many aspects of his design process as possible to give him and his team the best material for their imagination. Our imagination needs raw material so that it can come up with new ideas.
“Creativity is the power to IMAGINE the world that isn’t your world yet.” – Brajke Ingels
For example, Bjarke likes to take two things that already exist and which seem to be ‘two mutually exclusive ideas,’ and work with them, COMBINE them, until he can bring “a third brand new entity to life.” One of his latest projects illustrates this creative process perfectly. The Amager Resource Center (or ARC) waste-to-energy plant near Copenhagen, Denmark combines a plant with a ski slope on the roof.
Nathan Myhrvold is an avid inventor and prolific author who likes to do what he calls ‘unlikely things’. He takes things from one place and applies them in another, in a ‘completely different context’. He surrounds himself with a variety of influences and INPUTS.
All those inputs come to our brain and become part of the interplay of our neurons sending a countless number of electrical impulses. Our EXPERIENCES are the raw material for our brain. And they get transformed into new ideas.
In a similar manner, the famous American movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer Phil Tippett
“Creativity is not creating something from nothing but taking what has already been there and TRANSFORMING it”.
– Phil Tippett
Robert Glasper, an American singer, pianist and record producer composes jazz music. In his view “Jazz is music made by mixing other music”. He sees creativity as an endless REMIX of inputs. That’s why he says: “Don’t wait for the muse!”
Don’t wait for the inspiration to come but rather go out to meet it. Experience as much as you can. And that experience will feed your creative process whatever that creative process might be.
A novelist and short story writer Michael Chabon would agree. Michael takes ideas and inspiration anywhere he can. He does not aim to try to do something completely different from what has been created or written. Rather he tries to USE what is already out there. He lets those existing creations inform and help give shape and life to his own creative work. And although we are inspired by existing creations, what we create is unique due to our unique life experience.
Ehren Tool is a ceramic artist whose work has been heavily influenced by his service in the Gulf War. When he came back from the war he knew that he did not want to stay in the military service. So he was taking many different courses trying to find out what else he could do. Eventually, he started to work with pottery. Since 2001 Ehren has made and given away over 20,000 ceramic cups. For him making pottery is a creative outlet, a way to channel his feelings and MAKE A CONNECTION:
“I hope conversations flourish between veterans and the people who are close to them. I also hope that some honest conversation can happen about war and its causes.”
– Ehren Tool
A novelist and English professor Zachary Lazar found creativity in an unlikely place. Originally he visited the prison as a journalist trying to understand what happened to his father who was murdered when Zachary was just a boy. Zachary later wrote a book Evening’s Empire: The Story of My Father’s Murder.
But to his surprise, he found something else in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. He realised that there were many creative people there. And he started to come back with a new purpose. It was to help people in prison cultivate their creativity via creative writing courses. And how exactly is it helping them?
“It helps them see that they are important, that their LIVES MATTER and that other people pay attention to their lives”.
– Zachary Lazar
According to Zachary, crime and punishment “reduce people to the worst thing they have done in their lives”. And that does not really help their rehabilitation. During the creative process of writing, they can begin to see and appreciate themselves, sometimes for the first time in their lives.
An American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, and musician Tim Robbins, who you might remember from the movies The Shawshank Redemption or Dead Man Walking, runs a similar acting program for inmates in the California Penal System. Tim views Arts as an essential part of Prisoners Rehabilitation Program. He believes that nobody should be defined by their mistake for the rest of their lives. He has witnessed a transformation of the inmates by their involvement in the acting classes.
“Within the space of the acting class, they are not defined by their crime. They can experience that they have LEGITIMATE EMOTIONS and that they have the right to express them. They can feel WHOLE again.”
“Maybe depression, empty feelings are connected to the lack of creative sparks.” – Tim Robbins
It is not always easy to feel that we can express our emotions freely even outside of prison walls. Our society is not always open or welcoming. So perhaps if via practicing Arts we can express our emotions that we normally cannot, perhaps the creative process is essential to our happiness.
Nathan Myhrvold, the inventor I mentioned earlier, gives simple advice. If we want to be more creative we need to force our brain to get off the path of the least resistance. We need to TRY SOMETHING NEW, LEARN SOMETHING NEW. It can be a new job, a new skill to learn, a new hobby.
The problem with today world is that it often requires specialization. But as Nathan says, “you learn more and more about one thing, until you know everything about nothing.” The trick is not to be bound by specialization and keep learning new things.
But part of that process are feelings that many of us are trying to avoid. The feeling of being FRUSTRATED, CONFUSED, and STUPID. Unfortunately, the only way to learn something new is to be willing to feel that way and willing to be WRONG.
Nick Cave, an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, probably best known for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, has a similar approach to his music. Each time he sits down to work on a new record he tries to do something new, tries a new style, a new direction. Even though he has a big success with one record, he refuses to repeat the style. He PUSHES the BOUNDARIES OF COMFORT tirelessly.
“You never know until the end if it’s any good”.
– Nick Cave
By doing so he actually takes risks because he never knows how his audience is going to receive his new music. As he says about his creative process, writing a song can be quite excruciating, “You never know until the end if it’s any good.”
An American television producer, writer, and director D.B. Weiss is today best known as a co-creator, showrunner, and writer of Game of Thrones.
Dan talks about his experience with FAILURE. It might surprise you but he regards his professional writing life as a series of many failures until the Game of Thrones. He does not regard failure as something to be avoided, but rather as something essential to the creative process. In order to be more creative, you should “WORRY LESS ABOUT YOUR FAILING.” Even if you are not satisfied with your creative work today, you can do another tomorrow. You can paint another picture, write another page, compose another song.
Creativity is imagination, an ability to imagine something that is not right in front of us, something that does not exist yet. We need to take in lots of new inputs, experiences, and stimuli, and then by combining, breaking apart, putting together, transforming, and by endless remixing we can bring new entities to life.
We all are creative because we all possess the power of imagination. But life and society around us often do not encourage creativity. And even our brain defaults to the familiar and to the comfort zone.
If we want to nurture creativity we should force our brain to try something new, learn something new. We need to embrace some feelings that are not very pleasant. Because without feeling frustrated, confused, or stupid, there is no new learning. We have to be willing to be wrong and push ourselves out of our comfort zone.
As a reward being part of a creative process can transform our lives. We can experience that we do not have to be defined by the mistakes we made. We can feel more connected to others, make a conversation, feel that we matter, that our lives matter. We can express our feelings and feel whole again.
If you are interested in this topic, stay tuned. More will be coming from my own research soon! 🙂 Oh, and don’t wait for the muse!
This is a short post about my latest drawings and sketches. I keep drawing from life with watercolor crayons and also with an ordinary gelly pen. The above picture is a color sketch from last week riverbank walk – with leaves of the Linden trees on the left and the Dancing House on the right.
After I drew the view with the color crayons, I enjoyed some time in a cafe and applied some wet brushwork and more color.
And since it is spring now, the abundance of fresh blooms and blossoms everywhere invites me to draw and paint some nature as well. 🙂
And because it is not always possible to draw from life, I often draw from my photos as well. The line drawings below are from Tonya Graves concert we recently visited with Bill at Jazz Dock, the Prague Jazz & Blues venue.
They are easy to carry with you so you can sketch anywhere you go. That’s what I do with them – sketch outdoors or in cafes. Later on, I use a small brush and work with water in some. The color sketches gain more watercolor style look.
Why I love using watercolor crayons is that I can draw and then paint. And then draw again, adding lines on top of color layers.
Recently I picked a new medium for drawing and painting – Watercolor Crayons. The reason was to try some medium and method that might be practical for drawing and painting outdoors and in public spaces. A medium and technique that would be usable for daily sketching in color. Since I love using a brush and paint it is often tricky to open a watercolor or gouache paint set in a cafe or outdoors. The process is too wet and messy to use in public spaces. But not with WATERCOLOR CRAYONS! 🙂
When using Watercolor Crayons you can combine a rough drawing with brushwork. How I do it is first I draw in color and then I use water and brush to apply washes over the drawing. After the wet layer dries I sometimes use the crayons again to add details, lines, and a new overlay of colors. It can be quite quick and definitely a very fun process.
It is great for sketching and for noting down visual ideas you might have while outdoors or on the way. There are other ways as well. You can draw on the spot and then work with the brush later at home. Or you can use another water-based medium over the color drawing such as watercolor or gouache paints. It is definitely a great technique to experiment with.
What you need:
It can all fit in a small A5 size bag 🙂
“What color is the night?” my older son once asked me. I said, “blue”. But then we started to talk about it. We were thinking about the night in the city, the yellowish neon light shining from signs, reddish car light lining the streets, orange street lamps light falling on pavements, flickering blue light from TV screens, purple lights in jazz and blues bars.
Color is born from light. All the different lights at night create all variety of colors.
But if we ask “What color is the night?”, we probably don’t ask about all these colors that we can see at night. We might be asking quite a different question.
We might want to dive into our emotions, into our souls, into our hearts and find how the night feels for us. What does night mean for us? How does it resonate? What is it hiding for us?
Today for me the night is blue. Calm, deep, meditative blue. Deep as the ocean. Calm as a pair of beautiful blue eyes of a friend. Meditative, since you can have rest after a long busy day, lying on the bed, listening to silence. Your mind at peace.
If you wish, please share with me in the comments below. I will be looking forward to your replies. 🙂
“It is dark. It is cold. I am lying in bed looking at the ceiling. Suddenly our little boy stirs, makes a funny sound and starts climbing to our bed his eyes closed. He snuggles between me and my husband and falls asleep again. I am lying next to him stroking his hair gently not to wake him up. I love this morning ritual.
It is an early winter morning and time for me to get up. Very quietly I sneak out of our bedroom. I put my clothes on in the kitchen, pick up a small backpack and leave. The flat is silent. Everyone is asleep.
It is very windy outside. My hair gets immediately windswept. There are not many people in the street. A woman walking her dog. A car pulling out and driving off. The sky is brightening. I pass an old church attached to a monastery. It’s a beautiful sight, two spiky towers and black lines of bare trees against the sky at dawn. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my phone and take a snapshot. How many times have I taken this photo? Still, I cannot resist.
Walking up the street, I pass Yoga Shala. It belongs to my Yoga teacher Denisa. That’s where I should go. But not this time.
A small bakery on the corner is already selling fresh bread and rolls. I pick up some rolls for my boys. The lovely smell and warmth of the bakery embrace me, a small warm morning hug. All my senses are fully awake now. The sky is getting brighter.
Steps lead me to a nearby cafe. There is a table by a window and staff who know that I will order a cappuccino.
I put my coat down. The street outside is getting busy with morning commuters. I open my backpack and take out a drawing pad, pencils, and Copic pens. Soft cafe music, an intermittent sound of the coffee machine, little chats, the trams’ noise as they hurry across the square.
I check the clock. How much time do I have? Almost two hours. Good. It’s time to start.”
I wrote this post early in the year 2017. It was the beginning of the colouring book FANTASTIC LANDSCAPES. I completed the book and published in June 2017. It is available on Amazon for purchase. If interested in purchasing click on the buttons below or on the image.
How some fans coloured Fantastic Landscapes? 🙂
