Where do artists get their ideas from?
If you’ve ever studied anything creative you may have been encouraged to keep a sketchbook to collate ideas and record your work in progress. Well, the Creative Journal course I attended from February to May 2015, at Metal, took this concept and ran with it as a kind of self contained concept.
There was no final destination, as such - it was all about riding bareback on the force of your ideas. Facilitator and artist Heidi Wigmore called it,
“...a visual conversation with yourself.”
Taking Dadaist poetry, Surrealist experiments and mandalas as launch pads class participants had their preconceptions challenged and their creative boundaries stretched as Heidi encouraged us to engage in unexpected ways with images, text, music or blank space our creative endeavours became more liberated.
“A journal is a place to take risks,”
she advised.
Overcoming blank page fear
Particularly freeing, for me, was the altered book. To be honest, this wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Defacing books is anathema to some folk - with good reason - but ever since we were invited to make notes in our university course books I’ve been happily scribbling over my reading material.
The premise: choose an unwanted book you take a fancy to - preferably with illustrations - and get interacting with it - artistically speaking. The advantage: you’re no longer faced with the daunting prospect of the blank page. Result: yet more ways to access ideas.
Granted, I would suggest choosing something slightly smaller than the Readers’ Digest Book of Facts - which was a bit of a tome, to say the least - but it really fulfilled its role as a kind of chunky creative portal.
“[D]o not consider [keeping a journal] self-indulgent but something worthwhile and important– it’s creative, it may be self-revelatory,”
says Heidi, who cites Jung’s practice of creating drawings he believed corresponded to his inner feelings. If it was good enough for Jung...
Remember:
- Don’t decide what to do, just start
- Draw how you feel
- Allow yourself to express yourself in unknown ways
- Embrace mistakes
- Work through doubt
Find: Heidi Wigmore
Locate: your nearest Metal team in Liverpool, Peterborough or Southend-on-Sea
Discover: more on the power of keeping journals to inspire creativity with Julia Cameron
Get inspired: on Pinterest