Continuous Creativity

Every difficulty is an invitation to creativity.

I’ve said this to myself before, but I often have to be reminded of how true it is.

     When your familiar options are taken away, you’re left to either give up or press on with new inventions. If you’re willing to accept these challenges, they may jumpstart your creativity, shooting new life into everything you do.

At a recent meeting of the community arts group I’m a part of, our president gave us the activity of drawing a picture that was one continuous line—we were not allowed to lift our pencils or use an eraser. I’ll admit that I “cheated” a little. A life-long habit of constantly lifting and repositioning my drawing tool was hard to break all at once, but I always put it right back where it had been—including when I just had to touch something up after I had been looking at it for a few minutes.

It’s an inflatable orca, one of many oddball items the president set out for us to draw. I rather liked how it turned out, but the truly inspiring thing was how something in my mind snapped to life and accepted the challenge with relish. It was the most fun I’d had drawing in a long while.

     One of the other artists said that when he went to art school, the first thing they did was take away their erasers. They either had to work with their mistakes or start over. I kind of like that idea.

     Another thing our president talked about was setting “30 Day Challenges”, where you do something—for us artists, probably something related to art—for 30 days straight. That’s about the time it takes to really learn a thing and make it a habit. I know I need to learn to loosen up my style and use more innovation, so I think a good challenge for me might be doing a continuous line drawing every day for 30 days.

     I’ll keep you posted!