#look free yourself from the preconceived notion that your creativity has limits | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

goabrakadoodle · 3 years

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Consider this question first. Do you have any idea how many bits of information our brains take in every second? 11 billion bits! Out of which we process maybe 50 to 150 bits, and then can consciously hold just about 5 bits in our minds on a good day. 11 billion bits down to just 5. What a waste.

This means we are walking around eliminating almost everything that we see, and retaining only what we want to see. We’ve become really good at it. Bundling all these bits together and trying to make sense out of it. Skimming the surface, as opposed to unearthing the nuggets that might be lying just underneath. All because we don’t have the time.

So the less time we have and the more familiar we are with a given situation, the more likely we are to just take a superficial scan of the information we have, snatch and grab the bits of information we need, and think with it.

Which perhaps is why hacks and short cuts have become so popular. And which is why we end up making a mess of everything we attempt to do. So obvious. Superficial information, superficial thinking, superficial result.

It’s time for a way out of this mess: Art Jamming teaches you to get the most out of your thinking. Helps you work and operate in a creative space with a creative mindset. This is important, because both decide whether you will be happy and enjoy what you do in life, or continue to feel anxious every time you are faced with an out of the ordinary problem you can’t solve.

Art Jamming is a process art driven program designed to unjam the mind. Think with the blinds off. It aims to create an experience that is inspiring, rejuvenating and invigorating.

What is also so good about our Art Jamming sessions is you don’t need to know anything about art or painting. Or know how to hold a paintbrush in your hand even. In fact, the less you know, the better will be the outcome.

Our art jamming program does not assume anything. It is an all-inclusive process that engages both sides of the brain, simplifies complexity and helps you see better, think better, and work smarter at any age. Art Jamming helps bring a creative mindset to life through play.

What is a creative mindset? While everyone does some kind of thinking and has tools to work with, the mistake most people make is reverting back to a ‘business as usual’ kind of mindset. Instead of bringing an efficiency driven creative mindset, we bring a listless, dull mind. Atrophied thinking doesn’t solve problems, it create them.

A creative mindset is ageless. It is an orientation with which you approach life in general, and problems in particular. It is a lens through which you look at everything you face and have to contend with.

A creative mindset helps you to observe and see clearly the assumptions that you make. This is important because assumptions drive behaviours, actions and shape outcomes. Hence, being able to see clearly, and not what you want to see, is a big help when it comes to living and solving problems.

So for you to be able to get those positive outcomes you are looking for, you really need to be working on developing a creative mindset which we are now going to look at closely.

Pushing the limits There are three elements that combine to developing a creative mindset. They all overlap, and in the centre there is a fourth element which is further amplified by the fifth. Confusing? Let’s simplify it.

The first element is to feel comfortable with ambiguity. It is that sense of feeling OK when we don’t know what to do next. This state gives you the tension and freedom to explore and swim in possibilities and figure out or make up, what to do as you go along.

Your mind is open and energized to discover new ways of looking at things. You are no longer fearful of thinking differently. You are not prejudiced or approach problems with preconceived notions either. You also avoid the trap of shutting down your thinking and accepting the first solution that pops up in our mind because it makes us feel better.

Bear in mind, most of the initial ideas that bubble up are generally superficial as they are an outcome of superficial thinking. So be careful, and remember, dive deep. To find one great idea, you may need to come up with many ideas.

Learn to keep an open mind Developing and increasing your comfort levels with ambiguity is the first place to start. The second element is staying curious — outlandishly curious — because this is what allows the mind to leap over the tangled problems filled space and go beyond.

Remember, only a questioning mindset helps you challenge the status quo. Challenge the assumptions people make or you are making. Besides, curiosity is the perfect antidote to help you climb out of a hole or the thinking groove you are stuck in.

When you feel that you’re hitting your head against a brick wall. Or think you are coming up with a same solution to solve a different problem, it means you’ve reached the limits of your current capability. Curiosity will help you to get excited about what you might find on the other side.

Enabling you to push the limits, help you step out of the circle you have drawn around yourself. Take the leap.

Break the walls down To feel comfortable with ambiguity and kindle curiosity, you need to embrace the third element — playfulness. You’ve got to play with everything — play with outlandish ideas, play with people, play with colours, play with all possibilities.

Play helps you focus on the process, rather than on the outcome that you’re trying to get. Just observe what children do when they’re at play? When they are making up games, they don’t care about the final result. It’s always about keeping the game alive. Children are masters at working with an ‘infinite’ mindset. Go back to being a child. Play!

The playful mind is what allows you to foster experimentation and iteration and ensures the flow of ideas.

Like a child, you will be in the zone, engrossed in your own thoughts, ideas and feelings. In fact, you will begin to art jamin real-time.

This is the missing link when you’re thinking about solving a problem. The trouble is everyone takes thinking too seriously. And that is a mistake. Because it puts everything under great strain and stresses every one out. Sure, breakthrough thinking is kind of hard, but there is nothing to stop it from being fun!

Finding the soul At the centre of all three of the elements we talked about, is the fourth – its purpose is to be generative. It is at the heart of the creative mindset. It is very much about bringing something new into being. Which means, the mind is optimistic, it’s generous. It is refreshing. It’s about feeling better and making life better.

So always come at the problem from a generative space. While, that’s enough on its own, it is not enough when you are working to be creative in a space that is full of stakeholders with different agendas and viewpoints. In other words, you are being told to apply and perform using a “business as usual(BAU)”approach and rewarded accordingly.

While BAU is useful if you are working with something that is a known quantity that already exists, it is utterly useless if you are asked to solve a new problem in a new space. It will not give you the outcomes of resourcefulness, agility, collaboration and creativity you are seeking.

Adding the fifth element To be creative in a human-centric way, you need to add one more element. And studies consistently show that this element actually amplifies creativity. If you want to be more creative, if you want to expand your creative mindset, then you need to add empathy.

You need to be able to look at things from different perspectives and to understand other people’s points of view. Understand what a problem means? And why a problem matters? Because it’s only then you’re going to come up with meaningful solutions that really create the value that you’re after.

So, if you want to get the most out of your thinking and out of any creative approach, the most critical factor to consider is to come at it by combining a calm, collected mindset, and with empathy. This is more often than not, the missing link found in thinking in general, and corporate think in particular. It is sad but true.

Art Jamming in real-time

Art Jamming is a free for all session. Whatever you draw or paint, whatever the subject matter, it may not look like something you’d instantly recognize. But wait, there are two interesting bits of good news here.

One, all of us can draw and paint. It is a skill anyone can learn at any age. And two, at the end of our Art Jamming session, you will walk away knowing that you not only can draw and paint, but also discover that you have had a creative bent of mind all along, you just didn’t realize it.

You are primed to solve any problem life might want to throw at you.

Make the world a better place

Art Jamming sessions at abrakadoodle helps you feel comfortable and work with ambiguity; helps develop curiosity; demonstrates the advantages of being playful;and shows how to generate ideas that are driven by empathy. That’s what Art Jamming with us will be all about.

Remember, the underlying principles you learn from our Art Jamming sessions can be applied to resolve any problem or situation. It will not only help you excel at work but also to experience what living life to its fullest feels like. You will learn to nurture and actualize your creative thinking capabilities in real-time.

This level of confidence is a nice feeling and will make great things happen to your life, in excelling at work, and in building relationships. Art Jamming will help you see the world with new eyes. Rethink the way you think.

#artclassesforkids #childrenartclasses #processart

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beckettsthoughts · 6 years

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Envision and discover🎆🎉

I’m sorry this took such a long time to answer, but I wanted to make sure I did it justice. Thank you so much for asking, my friend

Envision: The day I am most looking forward to next year is … because …

I don’t really want to limit myself to a single day, but instead I’ll paint you a picture of what I imagine one of the best days might look like.

I’m at home, with my friends. It’s late evening, but it’s early summer and the sky is still light and pinkish. My partner is next to me on the couch, laying across me while I play with his hair. We’re watching panel shows or cartoons or indie movies, and our other friends are either on the armchairs or the cushion pile we’ve built up on the floor. It’s too hot to be outside, and we’re more comfortable inside anyway. When it finally gets dark, a day stretched long that we don’t mind because it feels like it gives us more time, we can close the curtains. It’s warm next to my partner but not too warm for a huge fuzzy blanket. The hand that’s not in his hair is stroking the fluff of the fabric. The heating went off several hours ago.

It gets late, we turn off the television. Either everyone goes home to their own comforts or they stay, I don’t mind. If they stay, we slowly collapse into the cushions and duvets and, once we’re settled, we talk late into the night. Expose our hearts and souls, our best attempts at 3am philosophy. We’re bonded in that way, but it never hurts to twine ourselves together more, to push the depths of that connection until we reach some great new level of love. God, it’s so comfortable, at home with them. For once, we don’t mind that it’s summer, that we’ve come back around to that unbearable, seemingly endless stretch of heat. We’re there for each other. We make it worthwhile.

Discover: What are 5 things you’ve learned about yourself or life as a whole this year?

I can live, more or less, independently. Certain presences in my life have done their best to convince me that it would be impossible, so when I took the leap to move to the mainland for university I was fully expecting to cave under the pressure and run crying back home within the first few weeks. Surprise, I can cook for myself and keep myself relatively healthy, I can get to my classes and do my damn schoolwork. I can go into town, I can manage my money, I can buy groceries and organise myself so that I never run out before the next delivery.

Friendship is an amazing force of positivity. I’ve had friends before, yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever understood true friendship until this year. I had casual school friends, sure, and there was even a time when I had some close friends outside of school, but nothing lasted. I felt like I was destined for loneliness and short-term friendships, that anything that looked like it was going to last would implode in a toxic, harmful mess. This year, I learnt that from that mess rise the people worth your trust, the people who can help and the people you will grow to love more than anything. For that, I could not be more grateful.

Ableism sucks, and I’m not exempt from it. This year I finally learnt how to let go of some of my internalised ableism, which involved both accepting my limits and pushing them in equal measure. I learnt to accept myself and my needs as an autistic person with ADHD, as someone with a painful chronic skin condition, and in many ways this helped me to grow into myself and develop my personality into what I’d always wanted it to be. I’ve learnt so many coping mechanisms, I’ve been able to move past some of the problems that had grown from my experiences with emotional abuse, I’ve been able to get help in new, ever-exciting ways. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I’m immensely proud of this progress.

I’ve learnt a lot about gender identity and the culture surrounding it, over the last year, and most importantly I’ve learnt that I don’t care about conforming to it whatsoever. I’ve been able to move away from home, meet new peers who just know me as Beckett, who just know me as me, and it’s incredibly freeing to have that power to introduce myself. Growing up on a small island has its benefits, but for anyone who’s not straight or not cisgender it can cause a hell of a problem when you realise that everyone, everyone, has preconceived notions about you. You have your friends, and you love them more than life itself, but everyone else feels inescapable. Moving away gave me the space to learn how I truly wanted to express myself, how I’m most comfortable when I’m not constantly bending to fit that small island mentality, and it gave me enough space from my old identity to truly solidify who I perceive myself to be today. Even though home is still tough when it comes to facing old assumptions, going home no longer brings the uncomfortable uncertainty of not knowing my own identity.

Lastly, I’ve learnt a lot about writing! Not just creative writing in general, but about my passion for writing and the different types of writing I enjoy. Of course, this is what I went to university for, and it’s honestly everything I could have hoped for. A few more essays than I would have liked, but that’s life and that’s school. I’ve just finished modules on fictional writing, on scriptwriting for the screen, and on using social media as a publishing platform. Next semester, I get to explore the realms of poetry, creative non-fiction and creative voice, as well as a module on inspiration and creativity. You do not even know how thrilled I am about this whole thing, that I get to study the subject I love more than anything. It’s amazing, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of learning about storytelling.

Celebrate the New Year with me and send me an ask from this list! I love interacting with you guys so much, it’d mean the world to me

#b replies #end of year asks #thank you so much #long post

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bethemilywardillustrationbl-blog · 7 years

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Portfolio Review(2) from a Creative in the Industry

Face and Email Review

I was able to meet with this ‘Creative’ as well as receiving feedback through email. At the time I wasn't able to meet face to face with them, but decided to send over my portfolio first so that they could see what my work was about and see it from a point of view where I have not yet explained the work. After receiving the feed back, I was able to arrange a face to face with them and discuss in full, so I could also tell them my reasonings for the work. Just like the email I received I was greatly impressed and pleased with the feedback that I received;

Hi Beth,

I've had a look over your portfolio and I'm impressed, it's very good. You obviously have a talent there.

I think it's a good thing that I don't know the background and research of these pieces of work because I can then give you my first impressions and say what I see in them and what my interpretation of them is. That way, you can see if they are working on somebody cold without any preconceived notions of your work.

As my background is in photography and primarily copywriting/art direction and not illustration, I can only really give you limited feedback on your work based on what I know. But here goes!

I'll split each piece of work into two criteria - concept and visuals/art direction.

Mother Wound - Mother & Daughter Relationships

Concept

I like the idea of exploring something that you can personally draw from. The key for being creative in any medium is to take inspiration from what you know - Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms because he served in the army, for example. This then comes out in the work and makes it much more powerful and personal, because you care about the subject matter. In your first set of illustrations, you've clearly done this and it makes for a very rich territory. Your relationship with your mother feels like something only you could explore, and it makes for a very interesting set of work. I also like the use of setting two images next to each other in the first slide of your portfolio - this shows the tension between two people, which reflects the concept in the work.

Visual/Art Direction

I think the use of drawings, photographs and patters works really well. It signifies three different things for me - drawings being the whimsical imagination of a child, photographs being the harsh reality of life and the struggles that it contains for a young woman growing up, and the patterns are almost a wallpaper backdrop that signifies home. Really lovely use of texture when these three elements come together. A motif that keeps coming up are wings and birds - obviously freedom. And possibly escapism. Birds only fly when they are ready, and this is a nice element also. The sky is also something that alludes to almost daunting possibilities. It's endless. It works well in the background. I also like the watering can that seems to be willing you to grow! That humour is very funny and also playful. You should use that more often. I liked it.

Allow Creativity to Break Free

Concept

What is creativity? That seems to be the question posed in this set of work. Exploring what it is first in your images is a very nice way to then show how it can "break free". But I think it's quite clever that the images you ave created are almost rigid and locked in pattern - ie: not free. The juxtaposition of the title - asking for creativity to break free - and the visuals that show it locked in some sort of ordered state is great. I like the contradiction.

Visual/Art Direction

Again, repetition in these images seem to be key here for me. Maybe play with this some more. How imprisoned can creativity be? Can it be something other than a repetition - perhaps a single colour? I also like how you've zoomed in on one of the sections, as although this is the same as the other pattern only closer, the process of zooming in makes it a completely new piece of work. You've scrutinised something so closely, it's become something else. Very interesting. The use of eyes is something that is very powerful, especially with the boxes over them. It feels like an imprisonment, which is effective. Eyes are the window to the soul, so they carry huge conceptual weight.

Bright Futures

Concept

Transcending yourself and becoming someone else is a theme here for me. As we all grow and develop - physically and mentally - you do become different people. The different faces that you've drawn seem to represent memory as well, as in, remembering a fragment of what you were even though you've changed. Also interesting that the faces left behind are blank. If we wallow too much in the past and in memory, do we lose ourselves? The use of boxes as almost cages is very prevalent in your work. Maybe this is worth exploring too.

Visual/Art Direction

Clean, simple and bold. I like the single use of shade here - black on white. Because this links to the concept - it is very cut and dry. Lots of use of space in both of these pieces of work too. Like space to find yourself. It gives the images room to breathe.

MS Society Poster

Concept

First of all, I really like this poster. It makes a very arresting and beautiful image of a condition that is so awful. It seems celebratory almost, which gives sufferers an air of dignity about their condition, which is a nice change from a hard-hitting, shocking poster illustration. So well done. I also like how in the main poster, the woman's face cannot be seen. This gives the condition a faceless value which then makes the poster apply to everyone - it doesn't matter what you look like, you could get this condition. It's a powerful statement. I also like the idea of the "cogs" looking like flowers. It makes the body seem delicate and also have a finite quality to it. Everything withers and decays. But people with this disease wither and decay when they are in bloom. It's a lovely idea.

Visual/Art Direction

The use of photography and illustrated cogs gives the feel of the condition being unreal, not part of the same world - which it feels like to sufferers. The addition of the zip also gives the impression of the people themselves opening up about their illness and baring all for the reader, which plays nicely into the idea of them hiding away and feeling like they need to shield their condition our of shame or embarrassment.

Mother Wound - Strict Mother

Concept

Again, drawing on your personal experiences is a good thing to do. Here, it seems that you are expressing a certain lack of power or a power imbalance. The fact that the hand of the mother is so large - and the only thing that you can see, giving weight to the idea that all she represents to you is authority - really shows a helplessness and an innocence. Whether this is you or not in the picture, the fact that the girl is faceless again draws comparison with many other girls' feelings on how they view their own mothers.

Visual/Art Direction

The repetition of the accusatory hand with extended finger, almost like a repeated finger wag from a stern telling off, is very effective. I also like the line that is drawn to the girl's face in the second and third sketches, as if directly impacting her physically. And right in her face. Maybe she is faceless in the face of her mother? Losing her identity and regressing to just become a child again, not a developing woman?

Isolation

Concept

The first thing that is interesting about this piece is the fact that it contradicts it's title - isolation but with four faces. But then maybe it's the idea that you are alone with many sides of yourself? Your physically one person, but mentally you are many, depending on the situation. I like this thought. When you are alone, you multiply and become more.

Visual/Art Direction

The very intricate sketch work of the faces are akin to masks; just the face - not the head or the hair or the upper torso. This fits with the idea of showing many sides to yourself when isolated. The way that there are four of them is interesting as well. Maybe four emotional pillars? Anger, fear, happiness and disgust? The way they turn away as they progress from left to right is also interesting, maybe because they do not like what they see and can't look us, the viewer, in the eye anymore?

Mother Wound - Mother & Daughter Relationships

Concept

The two images play two different roles for me. The first, with two hands clasped together, are noticeably the same size. Maybe a reconciliation between mother and daughter, the daughter finally having grown into an equal woman, and the mother accepting that? The headline "togetherness" underlines this notion. The second, with the headline "shush" is very pointed and breaks the spell of the first. Again, you play two illustrations off against each other and they have a relationship with each other - much like a mother and daughter have a relationship. Perhaps each image represents the point of view from each participant in the relationship - the mother having the view of "togetherness" and the daughter only seeing discipline and authority in "shush".

Visual/Art Direction

I like that the colour of the paper is cream, weathered. As if these concepts are as old as time. The simple paring of image and headline and the way you link them together in the same image (the finger of the hand going across the word "shush") is effective. The hands are drawn in such a way that they look almost monstrous - maybe signalling an underlying aggression in the relationship.

Such an in-depth review of my portfolio which was also received when I met with them, we were able to have a flow of discussion about my work and then comparing it with their work. Showing why they did something, and then to apply it to mine. Its great to hear that they can connect with my work and receive the same message that I am trying to portray without actually explaining why I did something. Its shows in a way that I am making work that has a clear message. Its a real confidence boost to hear such praise as well from someone from the creative industry.

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