Greenburgh Public Library Blog

Creative Inspiration

Creativity Found Inside & Out       

Whether you are younger or older, being creative means different things through the stages of your life.  Remember when you were a child and just about anything was a discovery?  Unfortunately, the older you became the more you acquired knowledge; which is both a blessing and a burden to being creative.  We all learn how to hold a pencil, paint a picture, write a poem, dance a jig or sing a song.  Now that you have mastered an artistic passion you may have to relearn how to improvise, make mistakes or push yourself to behold your world anew.  You need a way to rejuvenate creativity by staying spontaneous, fresh and open to new ideas.

Artist's Journal Workshop by Cathy Johnson

ISBN: 9781440308680

Publication Date: 2011-06-27

Based on her own experience in keeping an artist's journal, the author knows that an artist's creative life can benefit from written and visual explanations and experiments. This book lets readers benefit from the tips, techniques and exercises that make their artist's journals their own.

As part of the NYT "A Year Of Living Better" series, Matt Richtel's piece "How To Be Creative" offers fun anecdotes and tips on getting a good night sleep towards fostering ultimate creative powers.  He writes about the importance of getting out of your own way to allow for natural impulses, being audacious, and learning to be imperfect. 

We all criticize our work as not being good enough, still needing work or barely there for fear of making something that just doesn't look like the picture in the book.  Here are some tips to help you become less perfect and more energized.  Try adding some of these techniques into your creative process.  You will be amazed just how much your work will improve!  By making an artist journal you will have a daily reminder to play.  Remember - every artist needs a warm up exercise.  You may also find more inspiration at the Creative Bug website. 

• Copy An Art Image You Admire: Find an image you love and copy it onto paper or watercolor paper either by tracing, using the reverse stencil technique (demonstrated in an earlier blog), or using a light box, computer screen or window to trace.
• Make Another Copy: Do it again and again!  Do a series and just play.  Each one will be slightly different and will help induce a sense of flow while you work.  Flow is that wonderful sense of time when fear and over thinking are left behind.
• Design Your Own Art Tote: Toss the pocketbook and carry an artist bag instead.  Equip yours to your needs.  Items you might carry:  travel size watercolors, a favorite brush, paper towels, water bottle for drinking, a snack, old jam jar to put some water in for watercolors, pencils, pens, a white eraser (just in case a perfection urge arises) and a 5 x 8 sketchbook with thick enough paper for watercolors, pens or pencil sketches.  Carry a glue stick to paste cut out images or photographs on the verso page opposite your create page.  Either copy from life or from your ready reference image - anywhere, any time!
• Art Tote Happenings: Now that you are equipped you can take your daily creative exercise with you or bring it to the kitchen table.  Here's your daily boost to play by copying or get inspired for your more serious work.  Sketch or paint a copy of your reference source.  Write a poem about what you sense in the image.  Jot down a few bars of music or lyrics for a song based on what you hear the image portrays.  Note and draw some lines for your next dance choreography.  Combine all of these ideas for more creative expression.  
• Share: Perhaps the most important tip: share your work.  Even having a conversation with someone on your wave length about your art explorations is a must.  You will both be more inspired and you will have discovered more creative ways of being.  Maybe even enjoying a few laughs.