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Showing posts with label creativity tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity tips. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2014
Chronicling the Making of Dawn Secrets (a digital painting by Nicole Piar)
I was also excited to try a new technique that I learned from Cory Godbey that combines pencil drawings with digital painting in photoshop.
Here is my visual diary of making this piece:
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| Pencil drawing scanned into photoshop. I also drew the letters with pencil but they are not shown here. |
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| I painted a watercolor background and then scanned that in as well. I painted in a solid neutral color behind the girl in photoshop |
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| I started painting the different elements with a flat color. |
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| Blocking in flat colors across the whole piece. |
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| Adding highlights and shadows. This is the more painterly stage. Experimenting with color. |
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| Adding more highlights and shadows. Making some final color choices. |
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| Playing with the saturation and the light. Adding the hand-drawn type. Tightening the color overall. |
What I Learned and Another Layer of Meaning
So, this was a completely new technique for me. Something I never tried before. About halfway through, I was very unhappy with this piece. It lacked a luster and a magic. It felt flat and dull to me and I have to admit my inner critic was getting annoyingly loud. I considered quitting and starting it again as a watercolor in hopes that as a real painting it would have more life.
However, I decided to push through and keep struggling and experimenting. Eventually, the piece started to flow, a little spark entered, and it came to life. I could feel the energy of that first vision starting to emmanate through the piece. Yes!
All of sudden, the quote had new meaning for me. While making this piece, I was wading through the darkness of night. I couldn't see where I was going and I was about to lose faith but I didn't "go back to sleep." When the light finally broke and the dawn came, I had learned so much - so much more than I would have learned if I had just stuck to my tried-and-true methods.
To reach the "secrets," you have to trust in the existence of the dawn even when there is not a hint of light in the sky. Yes, I think this definitely extends far beyond art-making but the process of creating can be a little microcosm - life condensed.
What bits of wisdom you have learned through your creative process? I would love to hear them in the comments. Please share.
"Dawn Secrets" is part of Lovely Ink. If you would like a free desktop wallpaper and 8x10"printable of this art, please SIGN-UP HERE.
You can also get laptop skins, stretched canvases, framed art prints, and phone cases featuring this art HERE.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Speaking at the Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit
Calling all Artists, Writers, Musicians, Designers, Yoga Teachers, Bodyworkers, Acupuncturists, Healers, Dancers, Counselors, Therapists, Life Coaches and Independent Creative Entrepreneurs...
My friend Jennifer Lee is launching her second book Building Your Business the Right-Brain Way and she’s inviting us to celebrate with her during the event. Join me live in the chat room on April 8th – I can’t wait to interact with you.
Grab your FREE pass here.
Some of the things you’ll learn from this fabulous line-up include:
- The power of thinking BIG, and leveraging your creativity and experience
- How to make art that sells
- How to create a highly profitable business, and work part-time
- Advice on how to manage multiple moola-making methods
- Using Pinterest effectively to grow your creative business
- Why branding can get in your way – and why positioning is way more important
This will be an amazing learning experience and a lot of fun! Join me on this wonderful journey.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
5 Minute Meditation to Get You Ready for Working and Creating with Joy and Ease
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Reset Sunday: Imagine
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| The Creation of the Birds, Remedios Varo |
For this week's Reset Sunday I thought I would make a list of some of the discoveries in Imagine that really struck me. These should be fun concepts to play with and explore in our lives over the next week and see how they impact our personal creativity.
- Relaxing and Un-focusing the mind to create fertile ground for the Flash of Insight. If you meditate, you may be familiar with this mind set already. After you have spent some time focusing on the breath or a single point of awareness, you can start to let your consciousness spread outward becoming very receptive. You are not directing your thoughts anymore they are simply rising and falling across your consciousness as you observe. If you have been working on a project and hit a creative wall, accessing this relaxed mind can help the pieces to fall together in a new and clearer way. You can help to initiate this mind set by going on stroll, taking a shower, or laying in bed for a while after you awaken. You let you mind wander and you simply watch and stay alert to your daydreams. I remember when I was in college, I would do all the research for a paper and jot down some some hints of what I was trying to distill and express but couldn't quite grasp yet. Then, I would go and take a shower and watch as my ideas aligned themselves in surprising ways. Warm rushing water helped my thoughts coalesce and then, I would be ready to write.
- Happy moods seem to be conducive to flashes of insight and depressive or sad moods are conducive to editing, reworking, finishing and refining a project. Being alert to your emotional state can help to guide your creative work flow.
- The Benefits of Blue: There were some studies that showed priming the subject with a flash of blue led to an increased amount of creative solutions. This would be an interesting one to explore on your own. Beyond just seeing if azures and periwinkles stimulate you imagination, you can also pay attention to what type of environments make you feel the most creative.
- The Benefits of Constructive Criticism: They found that constructive criticism is more helpful than a completely free and non-judgmental environment for brain storming. Especially, when problems are pointed out and ideas on how to fix them are presented together. So if you are working collaboratively don't be afraid to point out things that need improving or wholes in someones reasoning or methods (in a compassionate, gentle way of course). Or if you are working on a project alone, finding someone who can crit your project will help you to see what areas still need finessing or editing and which ones are best left alone.
- The Outsider Mind: Getting distance from the your field of creativity can help you to see your project in a new and unusual light. If you are a painter, having someone look at your work who doesn't know much about visual art can help give you a different perspective and see it from the outside. You can also finish a project and put it away for a few months and come back to it and see how you respond. Last, travel can help shift your point of reference and see your work from another angle.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Reset Sunday: Deep Sight
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| the curious passion flower in my yard |
For much of the time, we walk through life and only see the idea of the things around us. When I open my bedroom door, I don't SEE where the paint has chipped slightly along the edge or the little residue of fingerprints or the slight variations in cream color. Mostly, I briefly and almost unnoticeably THINK door and continue on my way. Of course, if we truly saw everything thing around us all the time we would probably take an hour just to transverse the vast territory between the bedroom and the kitchen. So the mind's ability to simplify, categorize and name is definitely appreciated but probably takes the driver's seat more often than is necessary. This Reset Sunday is all about awakening the sense of sight and seeing how it activates both your sense of full present awareness and your imagination.
First, find a plant. It can be as simple as a blade of grass or as complex as a passion flower or as grand as an eucalyptus tree. It can be a potted plant or bouquet of flowers in your house or something you discover in a park or yard. If you want to make day of it and you live somewhere warm, check out a botanical garden. I think I might go to one of my favorite places in Los Angeles, Huntington Gardens. If you feel comfortable drawing or even if you feel uncomfortable but adventurous, I suggest you bring a pen or pencil and draw the plant as you are practicing seeing it. The process of drawing can really engage and awaken our sense of sight. Don't worry about the drawing being good or right. The process is the practice and you can always recycle the drawing afterward.
Sit before the plant and let your body and your face relax and soften. Deepen the breath and settle in. Allow your eyes to go on a little adventure. Start following the lines of the stem, the leaves, the petals, the buds. This is a slow journey for the eyes. Let the small space expand into an entire universe. When you have covered every nook and cranny, start again and see what miniature miracles you missed the first time. If you are drawing, follow the the edges of the plant with you pen on the paper. Record every subtle shift in curvature and shape. Below is a brief guidebook for this journey that points out some attractions to be alert to on your visual journey.
- Texture: You don't have to touch something to get a feeling for texture. Your eyes can feel it as well. Does it appear soft, prickly, smooth, velvety, mooshy, powdery, pointy, slimey, cool, hard, feathery, or something that may not have a word but only a feeling? Explore the textures as they change with your eyes and record them with your pen.
- Color: Observe the subtle shifts in color. You can name them if it helps (oh, that green is edging on blue here and yellow at the tip of the leaves) but you can also just enjoy the sensual experience of the plant's color palette unfolding before you.
- Light and shadow: Where is the plant obscured in darkness and where is the light so bright it might be dissolving the edges of the leaves or petals? Where is light creating transluscene and where is the absence of it creating a deep opaqueness?
- Weight: Do the leaves appear light and airy or ponderous? Is the weight of a giant bloom bending the branch? Where is the plant reaching upward defying gravity and where is it bowing and tilting towards the earth?
- Negative Space: Notice the strange organic shapes that are created between the leaves, branches, and stems - unique puzzle piece of sky or wall or whatever fills the background. Some shapes may be surprisingly angular and geometric while others will be curved and meandering.
- Shapes: Observe the shapes that the plant itself makes. Maybe the leaves are extended ovals or hearts, or long uneven triangles. Maybe the branches are making T's or Y's. Many shapes will seem unnameable but that will only make seeing them more of an adventure.
The first part of this practice, the seeing, is the meditation. The second part is the arena of imagination and self-expression. Have fun with this and notice how activating your deep sight may change how you see everything else as well.
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