Rubbing & reuse
Thanks to Anna Pinsky for this fine artwork and creativity idea. As kids (and apparently as adults), one art activity is to rub a crayon over a leaf to form an intricate pattern, in similar fashion to its medieval brass rubbing cousin. Insights: Bigger picture #1: The leaf-rubbing activity can expanded to include the possibility of taking common objects in …
Ideas Workshop: Combinations
In round 2 of the Ideas Workshop we explored idea creation through combinations. The exercises included: Taking two disjoint ideas and combine them in as many ways as possible. Combining unrelated images and captions. Word creation: on one sheet of paper, make a list of word beginnings around a theme, one per line, on the right edge going down the …
Wall expansion
A bit more up on the wall… the room still feels bland, but we have progress…
London Creativity Night kick-off
As part of “Do something you’ve always wanted to, but never got around to” month we held the first ever London Creativity Night tonight at the famous Garrison Public House. The evening was filled with brainstorming and idea generation, building on “sketch-your-ideas”, by introducing the SCAMPER technique: Substitute Combine Adapt Magnify / Modify Put to other uses Eliminate Re-arrange / …
Observation exercise
Painting is a unique opportunity watch a picture unfold on the page. Visually, we experience color and tone everywhere, but our mind quickly translates these images into words and concepts to understand and interact with them. Soon as we label an object, “the tree”, “a bus”, “Mr. Anderson”… the unique experience is gone. One exercise I enjoy is to sit …
Ideas Workshop: brainstorming
The ideas workshops kicked off last night, with an excellent session on improving brainstorm by utilizing visualization. For each idea we came up with, we had to draw a quick sketch to represent it. To generate ideas we took an every-day item and tried three different approaches: brainstorming alternate uses designing improvements building swiss-army knife adaptations Take-aways from the workshop: …
Room project update
The first step to a project is to get it off the ground. Then you actually have to do the work. But that’s true with anything, right? You have to start somewhere, and then all you can do is take the next step towards your objective.
Strange coincidences
I had dinner last night with a friend who recently enrolled in a creativity course, and then I ate lunch today with a different friend who is also enrolled in the same course. That was enough for me to look into it, and now I’m enrolled in an “ideas workshop” through the Central Saint Martins college of art and design.Classes …
Chi flowing voodoo stuff
This painting is the inspiration for the bedroom transformation project. I could pretend that it had some symbolic meaning for the chi flowing into my room, or channeling forgotten voodoo dolls and odd prehistoric roman gods, but alas, no. It just started as a few triangles and circles in my sketchbook, and just sort of happened that way. Still, if …
Bedroom transformation project
My bedroom has always been a bit plain. Unpainted drywall and a not-really-colorful carpet hanging on the wall. Pleasant in a simple sort of way… but not conducive to creative thinking. So, I have embarked on a project to transform my room. I took an introduction drawing course and painting course in 2002, but I still don’t really know what …