Exploring the creativity of the #CreativeLife (Part 2 of 4)

 This week we are looking at one aspect of creativity that many people (sometimes) forget about: learning.

I love learning new things, and perhaps you do too. But many people associate learning with school where tests and exams are necessary evils. Like most of us, I didn't like those so much, although gaining the knowledge or the skills were still worth the effort.

The same goes for any creative activity. Even engineers have to think outside the box and that is creativity too.

So what have you learned recently? Maybe you don't even realise that you learned something new or improved a skill that you already possess. Learning to draw or paint is a skill that I didn't have a child. Yes, I have been doing it for about seven years now, but I had to learn to draw and paint.

The more I practice the better my skills get for sure, but the practice also has an added benefit: inspiration. Yes, I know you are thinking that inspiration is for amateurs and there is some truth to it. But improvement comes with practice, learning, and practising some more. And the more you do, the better you see the things around you that can inspire you to challenge yourself to learn more.

Portraits have always been the one thing that scared me so this year I am learning and practising and learning and practising some more. I do not want to become a professional portrait artist, but becoming more skilled at drawing people will help me become a better artist.

If you want to learn to draw but have always been too afraid to try, check out this video, it just might inspire you to pick up a pencil. Be warned, you may never want to put it down again! 😉

Stay healthy, learn something new, and live creatively until Monday!

●︙● Linzé  🇿🇦💖

The #CreativeLife 2021 - review of week 5

 I am sure you are familiar with the expression “it never rains when it pours”, and that is what we have been building up to at the lab since the start of the year. Assessing equipment from various clients to provide them with quotations for the tests that they require for both local and export markets.

It has become a predictable game for us: slow starts and then suddenly almost everyone submits the work at the same time and we are overwhelmed. It is what the rest of this month looks like on my work schedule. Since we have been working nearly all through 2020, it is necessary to also take time to properly plan downtime. Being overwhelmed causes anxiety (at least for me) that can be avoided with a well thought out schedule.

Creativity is not just about art or writing for me, because of this often unpredictability of my work. Of course, planning may seem to be something we do everyday, but thinking about the test schedule instead of jumping in can help to get things done without the anxiety that comes from too much to do, and to little time to get it done.

Getting things done is also satisfying when an ink and watercolour painting now sits in my portfolio, instead of on my drawing board. Not my best work I think, but not finishing it was worse than a few mistakes here and there that I do better on with the next project. Learning is part of creativity, otherwise we stagnate.

Other than mentioning that my monthly newsletter also comes out today, I can report that I am also working on a junk journal of sorts. Stay tuned to see what those pages look when it is done. And it will not be vintage alone, I can promise you that! 😅

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Thursday!

●︙● Linzé 🇿🇦💜

PS: I drew a gryphon for inktober52 this week. I also have a book with a gryphon as the main character. Follow the links if you are curious. 

Exploring the creativity of the #CreativeLife (Part 1 of 4)

 This month we are going explore creativity a bit more. What is creativity and how does it work. We are also going to explore some things that many people do not consider to be a creative activity but when you understand the fundamental idea, you might change your mind too (as I did).

Today we are looking at how creativity is defined by multiple sources.

CREATIVE: “Creating, able to create, inventive, imaginative, showing imagination as well as routine skill.” (Oxford Concise Dictionary, 1983)

CREATIVE: “Involving the use of skill and the imagination to produce something new or a work or art; having the skill and ability to produce something new, especially a work of art.” (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2015)

CREATIVITY: “Creativity is an action, not a feeling.” (The Practice, Seth Godin, 2020)

Commit yourself to do the work instead of waiting for some feeling to tell you that its time to create. (paraphrased from The Practice)

CREATIVITY: “Creativity, ..., is a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed.” (Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 2013 ed)

Note: a symbolic domain is described as music, physics, art, etc.

Our daily supply of attention is limited and we need to decided how much of this limited resource we are going to spend on the creative process. Because it is a learning process. We need to learn the fundamentals before we can create something new.

🎻 A musician learns musical notation, instrument skills, understand the genre, then create.

📚 A writer learns what makes for good storytelling, style, grammar, plot, dialogue and so on, and then creates the manuscript.

🎨 The artist learns to draw, how to use the tools, studies styles and techniques, and mediums and then creates. (paraphrased with a few extra examples.)

That's a real mouthful, but next time we will leave the academics behind and explore creativity from a practical perspective.

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Monday!

●︙● Linzé 🇿🇦💜

PS: Newsletter out next Monday.

The #CreativeLife 2021- review of week 4

The week started off all guns blazing or is it all radars scanning? LOL! I am busy testing a golf ball tracking radar, and after carrying it around for a bit on Friday, I can attest to the fact that it is heavy. Good exercise! 😂

   We had our tag challenge due this week and I am happy with how mine turned out. I used a serviette, textured paste with a stencil, and then painted it with gold acrylics to add some accents. The challenge for February is going to be fun too. I created the tag challenge because the tags are small and small projects are less intimidating.

My January tag

   With more work coming in soon, I had to spend some time helping to work out a few quotations for a company that manufacturers a huge range of products. Will be fun to get those products in the lab soon.

   If you read the news recently you will have seen that South Africa was hit by a tropical storm that hit land in Mozambique to the east of us. Where I live we have only been receiving loads of rain, although the parts of the country directly bordering Mozambique have been hit hard by floods and high winds. If you are a praying person, please think of the people who were hit by this disaster on top of the current pandemic.

  

   I promised to keep these posts short, so I am stopping here, for now. In February we are going explore creativity a bit more, so remember to subscribe to be notified when the post is live.

   I am also going to add a link or two from people or websites that you might like to follow if you are a crafter, artist, or creative person who likes to learn new things like I do.

In the meantime you can check out this course about Becoming Creative on Udemy.com (I get no financial benefits if you decide to purchase this course, I just liked it.)

Stay healthy, and live creatively until Thursday!

●︙● Linzé 🇿🇦💜

Eating the elephant - one bite at a time: achieving big goals in the #CreativeLife

 You have probably heard this saying about eating an elephant many times before it is especially true for our topic today. We set big goals for ourselves then procrastinate in working at them.  Maybe they are too overwhelming, or scary, or seem unachievable. But they don't have to be.

Big goals or goals that take time are necessary to challenge ourselves to grow as human beings. Without these challenges, we stagnate as humans. The same goes for creativity. If you don't continue to learn and push outside your comfort zone, you will never become a better artist, writer, sculptor, or poet. Or engineer for that matter.

But these big goals are scary, and they can cause us to become paralyzed in our journey towards achieving them. Although I have been drawing and painting actively for seven years, portraits scare me. And one medium in particular: coloured pencil portraits. I have done ink, graphite, and watercolour portraits without (too much) fear. But something about coloured pencil portraits twists my stomach into knots. So I decided it was time to tackle this goal this year. (There is a deadline attached to this goal, in case you are wondering.)

Since I have some experience in drawing other subjects with coloured pencils (in fact I love them), I had an inkling of where to start. So I made a todo list if you like.

The bitesize steps

Caran D'Ache Luminance pencils on
PrimeArt 265gsm paper

Last week I did step 1 - swatching the set of coloured pencils I want to use. It may sound like a trivial activity, but knowing what the medium looks like on paper, is an important step. But also for me, it helps me to get a feel for the medium. Unlike paints, a dry medium like coloured pencils has direct feedback to your hand from the paper.

Step 2 (planned for the next few days) is to choose the colours and practice with them (applications and blending) on the actual paper I want to draw the portrait. This step is also necessary since I have different types of pencils, each interacting differently with the various paper surfaces.

There are a few more steps in this process to learn to draw a portrait in coloured pencil. My journey towards that big goal is not the same as yours, even if we have the same goal. I suggest that you take a few minutes and plan the steps to achieve that goal, because, in the end, you are going to be ecstatic when you achieve it.

Remember to stay healthy, and live creatively until Monday!

●︙● Linzé  🇿🇦💜