Yesterday I hosted a free class, Born to Create: Why Your Creative Play Is ESSENTIAL, Not Self-Indulgent, and the participants loved it so much, I decided to share it on the podcast!
I covered:
In one of my recent free Q&A calls, Talia asked, “What can an artist do to become unblocked?” and I went on a bender. Using my 10 Rules for the Creative Sandbox as a basic outline, I riffed for several minutes straight.
Then Talia shared the particulars of her block (hint: she’s an actress who’s turned to writing as a brilliant tactic to deal with the lack of control over whether she gets cast or not), which launched another riff on my own sad story of stuckness, how I got back to creating, and the only foolproof way to unsuck.
This episode is the result. [Read more…]
Back in 2011, in an attempt to get back to making art after over a decade of perfectionist paralysis, I set out quite intentionally to do the opposite of what I used to do.
Instead of aiming at perfection (or at least awesomeness), I embraced the motto, “Think process, not product.” And where before I would plan a piece out to an inch of its life, now I embraced randomness and spontaneity.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the meticulous, nitpicky style I’d always used. Working that way had resulted in countless pieces that I’m still proud of to this day.
But my working style had exacerbated my perfectionist tendencies, and I was determined to change that pattern. Now when I approached my art table, I made the conscious effort to be mindfully messy.
I’ve found this way of working exhilarating.
I allowed myself to play, to explore, to make messes and then find the order waiting inside them, rather than always trying to impose order in the hopeless attempt to match the perfect image in my head. I started using chaos as an intentional element in my work, rather than something I did my best to avoid.
Let me be quick to state that when I’m at my art table I still want to come out with something that pleases me — of course I do! And I still bump up against the internal critic, especially as I got further into a piece. But a good chunk of the time nowadays when I’m working at my art table, I’m in a pretty blissful state of freefall and discovery.
“Hmm…” I’ll think, “I wonder what would happen if I tried…”
This is absolutely my favorite part of the creative process!
I can feel my heart start to race, my skin tingle, my head feels almost as if I’m floating. It’s scary and thrilling and fun all at the same time — the biggest high ever!
In his book, Uncertainty, Jonathan Fields talks about the creative process as having two distinct phases:
1) The insight, or dot-connecting phase, when the idea or vision comes to light.
2) The REP phase, which stands for refinement, expansion and production, when the creation is taken from an idea to concrete reality.
Whatever the creation — a painting, a book, a business — it has to go through both phases in order to come into existence. Most people feel more comfortable in one phase over the other, though as solo creators, we usually have to do both ourselves.
Me, I’m an insight/dot-connection gal. REP makes me want to pull out my fingernails. I can do it, but it’s often unpleasant, and I need all the help I can get.
Whichever phase you gravitate toward, the key to creative productivity is to set up support structures to help get you through the other one. That, or team up with other people with the opposite affinity and get them to do it!
My late book arts teacher did just that with grace. She made handmade artist’s books in editions of 300 or more, but she knew herself well enough to know that cranking out 300 identical copies would send her around the bend. So she wisely kept her role to developing and designing the prototypes, and hired binders to do the tedious work she had no interest in.
I designed my Little Star Book (below) in on of her classes, back in 1998, and in the process learned that edition binding was not for me. These tiny books sold well, but I never finished assembling the entire edition. BO-RING!
Lately I’ve been most interested in working on canvas, and usually I start a new piece with no agenda in mind, beyond what colors or medium I might like to use. As the piece evolves, it “tells me” what it whats to be.
Sometimes, though, I have a more fleshed-out vision for something I’d like to try, like a few weeks ago, when I got the idea to sew a small canvas onto a larger one, and then collage over the threads. I was curious to see what that would look like.
I also wanted to try incorporating typed text, from my vintage typewriter, and had recently discovered an old pad of airmail paper in a drawer, so decided to start using it up in my artwork!
I started typing:
Then tore the sheet into strips:
Then tore the strips into scraps:
Once I had a good-sized pile of scraps, I started collaging onto a 6×6 canvas using Golden Soft Gel (Gloss):
The finished 6×6 canvas:
I then collaged more blank airmail paper onto a 12×12 canvas (I love the way the paper wrinkles!), to act as the support for the smaller canvas:
Now, time to start the stitching!
In my original vision, the stitches would go in and out of the edges of the top canvas, but even with a curved needle this proved beyond my abilities. So I let go of that vision, and went with “second best” — having the stitches go in and out of the top canvas a couple of inches in from the edge.
Here’s how it looked with the stitching all done, and starting to collage the remaining scraps on top of the stitching:
At about this point is where I stalled.
All I had to do to manifest my original vision (granted, with the stitching not where I’d originally planned it) was to keep collaging around the top canvas. The problem was, I was bored.
For me, the joy is in the discovery, and I could see exactly what this piece was going to look like already in my head.
I was now firmly in the REP phase of the creative process. If the end vision had been exciting enough, I would have trudged through the tedium to bring it to life. But that end vision bored me, and the thought of spending hours to collage more scraps onto thread in order to make a boring piece made me want to run screaming in the other direction.
I confess, I had a mini Dark Night of the Soul here. What do I do? The sewing I’d done so far on this piece had been so tedious, and now I was bored with the piece altogether. I wanted to move on to something else, but the piece clearly wasn’t finished, and I did not want to start a pattern of leaving UFOs* all over my studio.**
Then suddenly I had a thought: What if I don’t follow the original plan to the end? What if, instead, I were to treat the piece in its existing, partially done state, as a blank canvas?
This is, in fact, how I work with my ArtSparks and improvisational canvases: I make a mark, then respond to it. In effect, I treat whatever greets me from my art table as if it were a blank canvas. The only difference here was that instead of starting with no agenda, I dropped the agenda in the middle.
Guess what — it worked! Brilliantly.
For the rest of the time I worked on this piece, I was in discovery mode, improvising, asking, “What if..?”
What if I weave linen thread in irregular patterns into the stitches?
What if I weave paper strips through the stitches?
What if I type on the paper strips first?
I had a blast finishing this piece, and to add icing to the cake, it sold! Someone who saw all these process pics as I was making the piece fell in love with it and purchased it. 🙂
Here’s the finished art, titled “Positively Entwined,” after varnishing (thank you to Carrie Lee for offering the winning title suggestion over on Facebook):
Selling this piece so quickly was a wonderful bonus, of course, but perhaps the best part of this whole process is the discovery of a really simple way to get back to joy when I find myself bored with what I’m making:
Abandon the plan.
Let go of the vision in my head and treat what I have in front of me as a blank canvas.
It’s funny: I used to fear the blank canvas. “Ack! What do I do?!”
But when you’re a practicing imperfectionist, the blank canvas is not something to fear; instead of a scary wall, it becomes an invitation. On its own, it’s still overwhelming — nothing shuts us down like limitless possibility. But that’s easily solved: just make a mark!
Then react to that mark. Add to it. Cover it. It doesn’t matter what you do, because whatever it is, you can then react to that!
This is the essence of the Creative Sandbox mentality, where there is no wrong. Everything you do becomes something to build on, explore, and discover.
Now I’m off to do just that with my next canvas…
* UFO = UnFinished Object
** Correction: I already have countless UFOs, so it would be more accurate to say I didn’t want to perpetuate the pattern of leaving UFOs all over my studio.
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
Have you ever been in a creative rut? (Yeah, who hasn’t, right?)
I’m in a bit of a rut right now. Watch the video for my off-the-cuff, “first thoughts” thinking about ruts and how to get out of them. Keep reading for a fuller story…
A couple of years ago I started making art again after a long, resistance-fueled “hiatus.” At first I had no idea what I wanted to create, but in keeping with the intention behind what later became rule number five of my 10 Rules for the Creative Sandbox (If you don’t know where to start, start anywhere – click to tweet!), I just started.
The first day or two was mighty uncomfortable. I loved the process of making messes with paint and ink, but the outcomes were less than thrilling.
Actually, I hated them.
Thankfully, one of the very first rules I set for myself was what would later become rule number two of my 10 Rules for the Creative Sandbox: It doesn’t matter whether you like it or hate it; what matters is joy in the process. (Click to tweet this!)
So I focused on playing and having fun, and did my best to let it go when I felt like the outcome was crap.
I figured this period of “cranking out crap” might take awhile, so I settled in for the long haul, but much to my surprise, within just a few days ideas started popping like popcorn. I started actually liking what I was making, and things began to flow.
Suddenly I was in a groove, and it felt great!
I couldn’t wait to start my fifteen minutes making art each day, and often fifteen minutes stretched out into much longer.
From February 1 to December 31, 2011, after over a decade of making almost no art for myself (except once a year at my calligraphy retreat), I made over 150 finished pieces!
In keeping with what was later to become rules number three and four of my 10 Rules for the Creative Sandbox (Think quantity, not quality, and Think tiny (and daily) – click to tweet!), I intentionally made these pieces tiny. I wanted to keep my investment small, so the fear-of-using-up-expensive-materials gremlin and the fear-of-“ruining”-a-piece-I’d-already-put-hours-of-time-into gremlin wouldn’t make me choke. And I wanted to get away from my usual M.O. of working very meticulously and slowly.
I wanted to be prolific, dammit, and I wanted to learn by cranking out a lot of pieces.
We get better by doing, after all, not by dreaming about doing. (Click to tweet this!)
I called the little pieces I’d made “ArtSparks,” and a couple of months after I started making them, I upped the ante by adding some external accountability. I knew being accountable to others would keep me on track way better than merely being accountable to me, so I started the Not Quite Daily ArtSpark Newsletter, which initially sent out a new ArtSpark every weekday.
It was great. I was more prolific than I’d ever been, and I was learning, growing, feeding my creative spirit, and having fun!
Eventually, though, other passions on my passion pluralite stovetop called out to me, wanting to get off the back burner. I wanted to spend more time writing and making music, and honestly, the time and energy required to scan the ArtSparks, prep the images, and create the newsletters was wearing on me. (I think that may have taken more time than making the art did!)
So I scaled back on ArtSpark issues, taking it from five times a week to two, then one. And eventually, I sent the ArtSpark Newsletter on hiatus.
Honestly, it was a relief not to have yet another deadline hanging over my head. But I was also a bit anxious that, without the external accountability, I wouldn’t make as much art.
I was right. My output went down dramatically. I was gentle with myself, because after all, I was still creating, just in different forms: writing or making music or making videos.
But still, whenever I got to my drafting table to make art, it made me happy. I felt better afterwards. Sometimes I was utterly delighted with what I made, and other times I didn’t particularly like them at all, but I reminded myself that this didn’t matter — what mattered was that I was doing it, and getting joy from that.
Time went on. The periods of not “clocking in” at my drafting table got longer.
Partly I was busy with other stuff, yes. But partly, I realized, I was in a rut.
Actually, I am in a rut. As in right now.
See, what happens when you just start is eventually things start to flow, and you get into a lovely groove. This part feels great! We love grooves!
But when grooves go on for long enough, they can deepen into ruts, without you even realizing what has happened.
A groove is comfortable, but in a slightly uncomfortable way. That’s why it’s exciting and fun! You have a direction, but you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.
There’s still a bit of uncertainty, which keeps you on your toes.
When enough of the uncertainty wears away, when you know most of the answers, when there’s none of the sheen of newness anymore, it loses its excitement. You might hate to admit it, but you get kind of bored.
Rut City, baby.
Yep, I do hate to admit it, but that’s where I am right now.
The good news is that getting out of a rut is really not that hard. It might be uncomfortable, but heck, we already know that the most important thing you can do to achieve any goal is get comfortable with discomfort! (Click to tweet this!)
The key to getting out of a rut is basically the same as the key to getting past a block: do something.
Tired of making the same old art/writing/music/whatever? So try something new!
Try a new medium. Try a new prompt. Try painting with your other hand. It really doesn’t matter — just do something.
You don’t get out of a rut or past a block by thinking about it. You’ve got to take action. (Click to tweet this!)
Really, that’s it.
I won’t get out of my rut by intellectualizing. I won’t even get out of my rut by writing to you about it. I’ll get out of my rut by planting my sweet self over at my drafting table and trying stuff.
I never know what I’ll create when I sit down at my drafting table, but for a couple of years I’ve had a bit of a rough idea — a small, spontaneous work on paper, an ArtSpark (as they’ve been defined up til now). Now I really have no idea what I will create, and that’s really exciting!
A bit scary, to, but with my Creative Sandbox Rules, I know fear’s not going to stop me.
Squee! I’m buzzing with anticipation for my next sandbox session!
I’ll keep you posted!
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
Oh. My. God. December is just NUTS, isn’t it?
In my Creative Ignition Club call today, one of my Igniters acknowledged that, what with 15 more hours a week at work to deal with end-of-year stuff, visiting house guests, getting ready for holiday events and whatnot, it just didn’t make sense to expect herself to maintain the same 20-minutes-a-day Creative Sandbox schedule she managed last month.
Plus there’s the fact that the projects she really wants to work on take up space, which is currently being used by house guests.
So they will have to wait. (Her projects, that is. Not the house guests.)
What’s keeping her sane in the meantime is incorporating her creative expression into daily life. Turning cookie decorating into an art project. Doing origami while watching TV with her family.
It isn’t sating her creative hunger 100%, but it’s enough that she doesn’t feel completely bereft. It’s a “band-aid” solution, and she knows it.
We all have to make do with “band-aid” solutions sometimes. If that’s your situation right now, here are my suggestions for optimal happiness until you can get back to “normal.”
“Band-aid” solutions can get you by temporarily, but unless you know it’s really only temporary, it’s all too easy to get worn down. If you know that in X days or weeks you’ll be able to indulge your creative spirit to the max again, your temporary band-aid won’t feel as frustrating. Keep reminding yourself that your crazy-ass situation is not permanent.
The biggest problem with “falling off the wagon” is not the falling; it’s the difficulty of getting back on.
When we’re in the habit of keeping a commitment — creative or otherwise — it has a certain momentum. All of that goes away when you fall off, and inertia is a formidable foe. It’s all too easy to let a couple of weeks slide into a couple of months, and even years. Put the odds in your favor by making a hard date to start back on your commitment.
Count down to your start-back-up day (you might want to make a chart to hang on your wall, or cross off days on a calendar), and improve your chances of following through in whatever ways you can. Here are some suggestions:
The more hoops you have to jump through, the less likely you’ll be to do the thing you really want, no matter how much you want it. Resistance is that powerful! Start preparing for your start-back-up date now by removing as many hoops as you possibly can.
I read about a guy who wanted to establish a daily running practice, but just couldn’t keep it up. Then one night he put his running shoes by his bed and went to sleep in his workout clothes. The next morning he was up and out on a run first thing. From that day on he slept in his workout clothes, and his running practice locked into place like magic.
Figure out what hoops are in your way, and do whatever you can to eliminate them. Clear off that desk or work table and pull out your supplies where they’re easy to access (just as soon as all the guests clear out, or beforehand if you can!) Set up your environment to invite you in. Keep an eye on your calendar and mark off sacred space for YOU, then make sure not to schedule ANY appointments during those times.
There’s a reason I recommend a 15-minutes a day standard, even for Creatives who can frequently manage much more than that. 15 minutes is actually enough to get into that magical state of “flow,” when time stops, you lose your ego, and live wholly in the moment. And it’s a small enough chunk that it’s almost ridiculous to say you can’t make it happen.
But if you really can’t get in 15 minutes, aim for 10. Or 5. Or one. Doodle, for god’s sake. Do something to remind your creative spirit that you haven’t forgotten about her or him. And like my Igniter above, look for ways to feed your creative hunger throughout the day.
We all have extra-ridiculously-insane-crazy-ass periods. Sometimes, making do with a “band-aid” solution for a bit is the wisest, most self-compassionate thing we can do. When those times descend, though, treat yourself with maximum love and self-care by preparing to get back on track as quickly as possible, and do whatever you can to keep yourself nourished in the meantime.
What tips do you have for staying sane and creatively nourished when things get crazy? Share them in the comments below!
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
