Your Creativity Needs You

You’ve found your way here – so now what?

What if you had 15 minutes today (and I know you do because you’re right here right now), what if you made the time and space in which to engage that creative urge always lurking just beneath the surface?

What do you wish you could do or do more of? What is that something you’ve always wanted to try?

For me, drawing is my favourite thing and my sketchbook is the place from where these Ransom Notes originate. For you, though, Your Thing might be that you want to learn to knit, paint watercolours, join a choir, become a filmmaker, invent something, or bake the perfect Victoria sponge.

The point is: we ALL have within us the desire AND the ability to create, to make something, to realise an idea or a feeling. All you need to do is get in your head that

your creativity NEEDS YOU!

So what are you waiting for? You’ve got your mission in your hand (should you choose to accept it), you don’t need much to get started, and all you have to have to go forward is maybe a pencil and some faith that

creativity always helps those who help themselves…

Where is this all coming from? Read this…

Share the Love

You’ve come this far, now why not

<<< click to share your creativity – @beware.of.artists

Not only does your creativity need YOU, but here’s a surprise, the world needs your creativity, too! By sharing your response to a Ransom Note, we are building a community who will enjoy, be inspired by, and learn from each other. Who knows, maybe some of us will “find our tribe” or even make the world that tiny bit more pleasant to be in than it was 20 minutes ago!

Still stuck? it’s your turn to DRAW!

Down here in this section you’ll always find a drawing-related idea or two for you to try.

These Ransom Notes  provide a starting point for exploring your own creativity through drawing, in a series of weekly “life drawing lessons” or even if you prefer, “drawing from life lessons”. For that matter, these Ransom Notes could be read in any order whatsoever so don’t feel limited by the order they are presented on this blog, and always feel free to ignore my own suggestions in favour of your own creative impulses!

• Choose a single pencil, pen, marker or other drawing implement and attempt to discover how many different ways you can use it, or how many different kinds of marks you can make on a plain white sheet of paper. Here’s about 3 minutes with an ordinary graphite 3B pencil:
  
• Meetings are boring so fill up an entire page with your favourite patterns, marks, and doodles. Or try some automatic drawing.
• Not in a place you can draw? Why not spend a bit of time looking, just notice what you notice. As you’re going about your day, pay attention to the patterns in the world around you. You’ll soon see familiar squares, lines, circles, and dots everywhere! Here’s what I discovered in one 20-minute commute:
  When you get a minute, transcribe some  of the most interesting patterns and marks you saw onto clean plain paper, and see what happens when you repeat to fill the page. I’m tired, ready for bed, but I have 10 minutes and an iPad to come up with this mysterious little design, which was inspired by the “flower” pattern of black circles/dots I saw on the tube earlier :
  

  The pattern of 7 dots…

  

  led to this pattern of 6 or 7 groups of circles

As I said before, definitely follow your own inventive inclinations! Get out the project you’ve had sitting in a drawer for the past 17 months, and spend 20 minutes to progress it a little further. All else fails, refer to the title of this post – now get to it!

Maybe this Ransom Note gives you a different idea? Let me know!

CREATIVITY need CREATORS

Still not there yet? Maybe looking at someone else’s work will inspire you, and down in this section is where you’ll find it:

• Vivienne Westwood a British fashion designer and artist who can make shabby look chic

  

• Lee Krasner an American abstract expressionist painter in mid 20th century, who constantly reevaluated and reinvented her work throughout her career

  

• Martin Creed a British artist who often makes something from absolutely almost nothing other than an idea