[-warm-up, drawing-]

Here’s a creative warm-up exercise that uses categories.

Choose a category each day to draw in your journal. Divide your paper into 8 - 12 small sections. Decide on the length of time you want to devote to this. My suggestion is to start with no more than ten minutes. Quicker sketches will loosen you up. Later on, you may want to devote more time to the sketches.

Draw a version of your chosen category in each of the sections.

The idea is to warm-up your creative brain by doing quick, non-threatening, simple drawings. Doing a lot of drawings of one thing helps you explore your visual knowledge of that category. You will find that you’re going to learn a lot about yourself, your visual memory, your ability to express a simple thing quickly and you’ll find yourself being more observant of that category once you’ve done the exercise.

Here’s my “Fruit” category page:
As you see, this isn’t great art. They are quick simple, even iconic sketches. And yet, I found out a lot from doing them.

I found out quickly that to distinguish between a drawing of an apple, a peach, a plum and even a lemon is tricky, but can be done. I found out that though I have removed plenty of them, I couldn’t, when I started, remember what the stem of a pineapple looks like. I found out that in order to make a peach look like a peach, you have to turn your pencil on its side to get a softer edge. I remembered that the skin of a lemon is pitted and that’s a bit of a different pencil mark that the tiny seeds of a strawberry. I found out that in order to sketch a bunch of grapes, it’s easier (and more fun) to sketch the dark, negative spaces that just draw the overlapping grapes. I found that sometimes a fruit is best depicted by the drippy, wetness that ends up on the surface below it. I found out that it was hard for me to come up with twelve fruits and that I didn’t seem to have a clue what shape a fig is.

Try it. It’s fun and you’ll be amazed how much it will stretch you.

Here’s a list to get you going:

I threw in the last three to remind you that these don’t have to be solid objects. But stick with the simpler ones at first. See what happens. After doing these for a while, revisit a category so you can see how the first sketches compare with ones you do after sensitizing yourself to this process and to thinking visually.

And, let us know what you learned by doing this exercise!

[-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.

[-photo essay, art, alterations-]

images and words by featured artist, Cynthia Korzekwa

That is, the formation of taste comes from the home. From homemakers. From our mothers. The way they feed us, the way they dress us, the way they decorate our homes. The way they care for us. Housewives are our first trendsetters. Because our childhood follow us throughout our lifetime, like Proust’s madeleines.

The domestic arts, the so-called applied arts, were really the first arts.

beer can purse, © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

soda can purse, © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

When art was based on everyday objects, art existed every day.

“la seine” - recycled box and paint brushes cynthia korzekwa © 2005-2007

Domestic habits have changed and so have we. Art for housewives is an eulogy to the housewife and to the aesthetics she’s helped us create.

plastic bag crocheted table covering, © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa all rights reserved

Transformed by need

magazine roll trivet, © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

bathroom pockets cynthia korzekwa © 2005 - 2007

Bricolage is taking something old and, via context, turning it into something new.

recycled bucket decorated with paper rolls, © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

Bricolage, a form of recycling, is thus about transformation.

“kadette”- embroidered photos framed with plastic bottle rings © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

Bricolage is a creative response to changing conditions which recycles elements to adapt to their new circumstances.

pizza box bead necklace, © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

Thus bricolage is, in some ways, a form of evolution. It assembles and constructs that which is needed from that which is available.

iris, “they had secrets to share” -painted embroidery with crocheted frame © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

“sometimes you catch, sometimes you throw”
ball point pen drawing with a paper bead frame
© 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa

all images copyright © 2004-2007 cynthia korzekwa - all rights reserved

You’ll also like:
Cynthia on Colour

Cynthia says of herself:

Visit Cynthia’s sites,
korzekwa | flickr site: los ojos | art for housewives | blog: paros | blog: ikastikos | email: cynthiak at tin dot it

Originally published in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations

[-art, photography-]

The following images were featured in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collections. Read the rest of this entry »

[-art, doodles, essay-]

What is a doodle? Read the rest of this entry »

[-interview and art-]

an interview with artist Rupert Kirby about his drawings

Rupert Kirby does fantastically detailed drawings and we thought it would be fun and instructive to hear his thoughts about the process of making them. Read the rest of this entry »

Mind Space

- giving myself permission to work

The space in our minds is often more cluttered than our studio space. Here’s an article that may help unclutter yours.

by Suze Corte

Here’s the way I work.

I’m not saying it’s efficient or even evolved; it’s just what comes naturally. For me there are two kinds of goals: the practical, everyday type and the creative ones. When I set a practical goal like having the house clean by Friday, I go about it directly and stay with it until I finish. True, I may procrastinate until Thursday night but still, I can plan exactly how to go about the task, how much time it will take, and what the final result will look and feel like.

Not so with creative goals.

When I dream up something I want to accomplish creatively, I invariably begin somewhere in the middle and work towards both “ends”the start and the finish. I remember doing this with a newsletter I was asked to create. The content included children’s art and writing, so the style, I felt, needed to be free flowing, surprising, and playful. Since it was a four-page newsletter, I had plenty of space to express myself. I began working on the project by brainstorming. I jotted down ideas for a while, then switched to playing with type styles, and soon found myself sorting through drawings and stories. I hit on an idea to use an appealing child’s drawing of a bee and repeat it, buzzing through the issue to highlight different articles. I tried it, liked it, but decided to set it aside in case I thought of something even better later on!

The process went on in this manner—somewhat like a bee flitting from one flower to another—until the newsletter began to take shape and make sense conceptually and visually. I eventually got around to designing a logo that fit the style, but I found that I needed to lay out a lot of the content before I knew what the “beginning” of the newsletter looked like. The point is, the final result was not something I originally foresaw from top to bottom. I had started with some basic space and size requirements and vague conceptual notions, but no concrete vision of the end product. Quite characteristically, I didn’t head out towards this creative goal on a smooth linear route. To the contrary, I weaved, spun around curves, backed up, switched around, and regained forward movement by fits and spits. Despite the path I took—or maybe because of it—the newsletter turned out to be delightful, inspiring to readers, and visually pleasing. And I felt fulfilled creatively, as if a puzzle had been solved and a mystery revealed. It was great fun!

Sometimes, of course, creative goals are not geared towards this kind of progress to their final destination. For me these are often the ones where I not only begin the journey in the middle of the road, but also complicate my life even further by nebulously approaching as if it were a circle, with no beginning or end, something like a traffic roundabout with options shooting off in many different directions. I don’t do this to confuse or frustrate myself; I find that it just happens as a matter of course with some impending creative quests. These are the projects that tend to get set aside until some future time when other ideas emerge that will send my thinking in a more fruitful direction. And let’s face it, some projects don’t deserve to be finished and are meant to be perpetually stalled.

I often put off creative pursuits by telling myself that I am working on them when really I am just cleaning the work table. I know a lot about procrastination, having developed my skills to master status. Gathering supplies is another nice technique for avoiding actual creative work: you look busy and you are, in fact, dealing with the tools of the trade, and so it is a great trick for pretending to be in the actual process of producing something. However, there are times when even these ruses turn towards the light and become useful. Sometimes while playing like I’m cleaning my studio, a glinting object will catch my eye, and like a magpie, I start to gather goodies and fill my creative mind with interesting bits and pieces, thought and ideas, connections and relationships that work.

In the course of writing this article—which, by the way, was only a vague concept in the narrow recesses of my mind about an hour ago—I have rediscovered a great two-part truth about my way of working towards and reaching creative goals: it doesn’t matter how I get there as long as I get there AND I must give myself permission to honor whatever path I take. There is no one right way to go and there is no reason to feel like there’s suddenly a Wrong Turn sign in my way when I choose to select a meandering path to my creative goal. This has all been very therapeutic for me, and now I will go create something. Or not. Or not now-ish.

My studio table is a mess.

words and images © 2005 - 2007 Suze Corte; all rights reserved

Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly; theme: space and spaces

Suze Corte is a writer, artist and pre-school teacher in Houston, Texas. In 2007, she was chosen as be the Houston Area Association of Educator’s of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year and the Texas Association of Educators of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year. Congratulations, Suze! It is a well-deserved recognition.

[-writing fiction-]

by contributor, Russ Kremer

In Elements of Style we’re warned that unnecessary words are as useless as extra parts on a machine. While food processors come with a multitude of dubious attachments and socket sets contain sizes we mostly lose and never miss, remote controls don’t have buttons that don’t work and the handles and knobs on almost everything else serve some purpose.

Unnecessary words don’t add anything. Consider: he stood on a round circle; she shouted loudly. On a larger scale, unneeded scenes add nothing to a story except the time it takes the reader to wade through them.

That’s why they’re a problem. It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them, or that the writing is poor. We should get rid of them because they don’t add to the story but instead, divert attention. They detract. They dilute what’s there, what you need to say, and weaken your attempt to weave a spell.

I’ve developed — but not invented — a process that gives me a clear-cut way to see what scenes should stay and which need to go.

I use index cards, sometimes colored ones if I’m in that sort of mood.

I read through my draft and make a card for each scene, much like a movie-maker might do. Each card lists at the top its place in the story (Chapter Three, scene two), where it occurs (Chester’s apartment), when it takes place, and who’s there. Below that I list each important plot point that is introduced, resolved, or moved along.

For the purposes of this breakdown I consider a “scene” to be any time I’d need to move the “camera” and shoot from a new place. Most of my scenes have two to five plot points (Chester decides to have a party; Theft of Lotty’s laundry; Chester dances with Sheila), so there’s plenty of room. A few times I’ve had to use more than one card, but usually after something is introduced or concluded, my characters want to move anyway, and the story moves to the next place. And, onto the next card.

Once I’ve created my cards I study them, one by one. I ask myself what would be lost without this scene. If I remove the card, what happens to my story?

If, when I remove a card from the stack, the whole story unravels, it has to be left in. If the story holds together just fine without that scene card then I have to admit it isn’t necessary. It isn’t adding anything critical and isn’t doing its part to move the story along. If it isn’t pulling its weight, my story doesn’t need it.

Frequently, the scene includes something which needs to be brought out. It’s important, but does it need to be here? While it’s true that suspense is necessary, many things can be explained immediately after they’re introduced (”Where were you last night?” “With Joe, at his house”) and don’t benefit by being postponed to a later time.

If I would need to make whole-scale changes without a scene, it passes my test of being a working part of the story. If removing it just means I need to mention elsewhere that Ann has a crush on Bill, I can think about where else I could mention that. But, if it doesn’t affect the story at all, I need to either remove it or else use that scene to bring up something the story does need.

My greatest obstacle to removing scenes is my defense that they expose something about the character that’s necessary or interesting. I have to recognize when I’m making that argument and discover if it’s just an excuse. Most things that reveal character can be moved to other, established and necessary scenes. Often, they can be left out entirely. If the author knows the character and how he or she will react, it will permeate the whole story and shouldn’t have to be explicitly stated. If Frank is afraid of spiders, we don’t always need a chapter of backstory to show how that’s come about. Sometimes it’s better just to have him react to spiders once or twice, so the reader gets the idea.

Is this a perfect way to see what to delete? Nope. It’s easy though, and does let me see how the story unfolds. I get a pretty good idea of what adds to the story and what’s simply there, plus I get to use index cards, which I love. And at the end, I know what’s on those index cards and in my story are all necessary things.

© 2005 - 2007 Russ Kremer all rights reserved

Check out another of Russ’s writing articles, What’s Missing?

About the author: Russ lives and writes in LA. He has had several works of short fiction and non-fiction published. He is a yearly participant and winner of NaNoWriMo where he’s well-known by newbies as a guy who knows a lot about writing. He began the “older, but not the official, NaNoEdMo website” - a group for all year ’round editing support, writerly exchanges and feedback which can be found at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nanoedmo/.
Russ’s website: half-dozen.net. Russ’s blog: crenallated flotsam

Originally published in the October 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: collecting

[-short short fiction-]

by Indie

Hacker baby was having fun. All he did was press a few buttons and Read the rest of this entry »

[-music, art, inspiration-]

Get your brushes, paints, colored pencils and gel pens ready. When you get finished reading this article you’ll be wanting them immediately!

by guest contributor, Debbie Jensen

“Today, I find myself interested in graphic arts and multimedia; albeit with music written upon my heart and soul.”

As a very young child, I began a long journey of piano playing which has followed me all the way through my adulthood. From childhood lessons to adult lessons, and after decades of musical education which included reading notes, chords, scales, music theory, and composition, you would think I’d feel like I had achieved my musical goals. To the contrary, I still have so much more to learn! However, once any pianist reaches an expert level, it is difficult (and expensive) to find the musical instruction required to keep going. From this experience, coupled with other twist of events, I have drifted away from playing music. Today, I find myself interested in graphic arts and multimedia; albeit with music written upon my heart and soul.

Music has been one of the strongest influences to my artistic expressions and has helped me understand how to express beauty, rhythm, and movement. From my photography background (from which I photographed thousands of images), I learned the seven wonders of photography, the importance of framing and composition, and how to create emphasis. So you might wonder, how could music influence artistic expressions of a different medium?

When I used to play the piano, sometimes I would reach to fasten my seat belt, but of course, it was not there. This often happened right before I started to play, and perhaps this occurred because I felt as if I was about to travel through space. From my mind’s eye, and at the point I was lost in my music, I could easily envision colorful, geometric forms. The forms were beautiful. Other times, I would see imaginary birds flying, and possibly those birds are manifesting themselves through my graphic designs today. My sketch books are filled with endless imaginary birds; and I often wonder, where is this imagery coming from? There seems to be no end to it.

In music, the rhythm can slow down and speed up, pause or sustain a tone, leap, or even freeze for an instant; but if the rhythm breaks–sadly, the moment is lost. Is art any different? Isn’t this concept similar to what we know as a design principle? Each piece of artwork whether it be 2-D or 3-D needs to pull together as a unit and needs to have the same feeling of completeness in the same way as expected in a song; that is, at least to the point of solving all the design problems related to it.

Next time you find yourself stuck, creatively speaking, turn on music which harmonizes with the piece you are working on. Amazingly, in the way songs are written and in the way words are expressed within them, pianists vary the way they choose to strike the keys. So, why wouldn’t music influence how the artist’s brush strikes the canvas? To experience what I’m trying to convey, close your eyes and draw with your imaginary pen or brush and strike the air as the music influences you; and let the music influence how you make your abstract design. If brush strokes and lines are artists’ signatures, then why not let your signatures be influenced by audio multimedia?

© copyright 2005 - 2007
Debbie Jensen “Black and White Piano Keys Composition”