Every Monday is Tip Day! Grab a cup of coffee and get over the Monday morning bump with tips, tools, and inspiration from Perch.
This Week: Get Out in the World
Lately I’ve been stuck at home more than I’d like for various reasons out of my control, and last week I began to notice my creative energy almost visibly drain away.
The first thing I did was leave the house.
Stencil Work on Canvas Tote
Feeling well enough or not, drastic measures were required. Now, given that I wasn’t feeling well, I didn’t travel far and in fact just made two stops – Starbucks and Hobby Lobby. But that trip gave me the creative boost I needed. I left Hobby Lobby with new fabric paint, Fimo clay, and a canvas tote to play with. A night of playing with new techniques and just creating was exactly what I needed. And, well, Starbucks worked its magic.
Then, over the weekend, I was feeling much better and had lunch with my brother at a favorite cafe in Little Rock. The next day, I went to see The Who’s Tommy at the Arkansas Repertoire Theatre and had dinner with my brother, his friends, and members of the cast afterwards. Talk about exposure to art! There were so many different styles, opinions, and personalities floating around that I could barely take it all in. I left with a lot to think about and a sense of gratitude that attitudes about art exist in so many forms and serve culture in so many different ways.
Get Out in the World
Engaging in the world around you has a way of opening yours eyes to new things – be they color trends, different perspectives or ideas about art, and new applications of old techniques. This weeks tip is a three-stepper:
Get out in the world and…
- Get new tools. I hadn’t played with Fimo in something like thirteen years, and it was so much fun! You can mix colors just like you mix paint, but you have the flexibility to create 3-D objects. I also tried some new fabric paint that blended well to create almost a gradient effect on a stencil piece. The objects I created were purely for my own enjoyment, but working on them opened my mind up creatively to new possibilities in my “professional” art.
- Get around art. Exposing yourself to art, be it modern art, theatrical art, 3-D animation, or famous works in a traditional gallery, expands your view of art and the possibilities it contains.
- Get around other artists. When you get around other artists, you naturally expose yourself to a wide variety of perspectives, techniques, and applications. Depending on a person’s background and training, art may exist purely for aesthetic, purely for pragmatic innovation, or purely to communicate a political message. The reality is that art exists for all these purposes and more. Getting around other artists will expand your own perspective.
Getting out in the world is one of the best ways to get out of a creative rut, and practiced as a habit, is a great way to keep the creative wheel turning. Trying new tools, exposing yourself to art, and getting around other artists will open your mind up to new possibilities as well as re-ground you in why it is that you create in the first place.
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