Creative Process

My Creative Process

When I began the process of developing my project, I had no real creative process as my usual approach to art was to just wait until inspiration struck me, then do a lot of sketches and see what I liked the look of. This was incredibly inefficient for such a large project, so I had to learn to put aside time to practice ink painting, develop ideas, and use archival research to find information and inspiration. 

Early on, many different methods for developing creative ideas and self-managing a drawn-out art project were introduced in the CPSA250 class. Exercise as a method of generating ideas worked well for me, and long, aimless walks spent reflecting and thinking up new ideas to try out later became a recurring part of my process (Oppezzo and Schwartz). 

As my project is heavily focused on my personal emotions, I began to use journaling as a way of understanding my emotions and reflecting on the experiences used as the base of my project. This really helped me connect with my chosen topic and narrow down my ideas to figure out how to get my message across.

Pretty late in my process, I came across Bible journaling, which is a type of journaling method used to reflect on faith and the bible. Looking at some examples gave me the idea to leave my paintings inside of an intact Bible rather than removing individual pages to paint and display. 

References

Oppezzo, Marily and Schwartz, Daniel L. 2014. “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition© American Psychological Association, Vol. 40, No. 4, 1142-1152. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf