[-quick tip, practice-]

A Quick Creative Practice
~simple habits can have profound impacts~

Keep a tablet and a pen or pencil on your bedside table at all times!

DREAMS
If you wake with a dream still in reach, jot it down immediately. If you want to fall back to sleep, don’t worry about transcribing the full dream. If you write the most important words and images you’re likely to remember the connecting links later.

SOLUTIONS
Those transitional times just before falling asleep or waking—especially from a nap—are rich times for problem-solving and inspirational ideas. Having paper and pencil nearby will allow you to capture these gems that might otherwise disappear from your mind as the world crowds in.

SKETCHES
The tablet isn’t just for words. If you’re like me, you’ll sometimes *see* images that need to be painted or drawn. Make quick sketches before they too are lost to time.

[-art, photography, poetry-]

NightSchool

Originally uploaded by MontanaRaven.

Today’s image comes from Maureen Shaughnessy, the talented photographer and artist who has been a frequent contributor to The PCQ. She continually explores deeper and deeper into the possibilities of photographic/drawn art alterations.

I asked Maureen about this image and she said that she took a painting of a “normal, boring fish” and digitally altered it giving the appearance of perspective and swimming in different positions…” Maureen was working with the idea of “taking a flat…almost cut-paper or 2-dimensional tapestry gradually…transforming into a 3-dimensional dream image as you go right.”

I love not only the image she came up with, but the visual, design and metaphorical exploration behind it.

To accompany her image, she includes the following:

Linking literary works to art - whether they are your own words or someone else’s - can add a further dimensionality that enhances both.

thanks, Maureen for an inspiring alteration.

This image is part of Maureen’s Alterations and Digital Collages set
Here’s a link to Maureen’s blog, Raven’s Nest
All Maureen’s articles on The PCQ.
Here’s a PCQ science article on Dimensions

Originally published in the original Practically Creative blog, March 2006

[-little nudges in the right direction-]

All such Graphic Reminders in The PCQ are the playful fault of
Nancy S.M. Waldman, © 2005-2007 all rights reserved

[-quick creative practice, tip-]

a Quick Creative Practice

~simple practices have profound impacts~

Write Down All Your Ideas

Writing it down does several important things:
• • keeps you from forgetting
  fleeting ideas, no matter how inspired, are easily forgotten
• • gets it out of your head so you can evaluate it
• • gives it validity and weight,
  the idea is no longer only an idea; it has reality because it’s on paper and can be seen
• • can begin to compare with other inspirations you’ve written down
  visualize how this idea might combine, enrich, work in ways you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise
• • saves it for another day
  maybe it’s an idea whose time has yet to come

Originally published in the April 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: inspiration