The creative process is a crooked road

Index Card, July 1 2011.

In this post, a few of my index cards, from July 1st to July 10th.

I thought you’d like to see them. I hoped that was the case. In any case, I like to share them so here they are. Collaged, painted, scanned, sorted and uploaded to flickr. And a bit about the process of making them today. Last post on index cards was what I like about them.

I was asked about my process for these collages, in the comment section on a previous post ICAD-post. How do a collage come to be? Where to start? How to plan them? Good questions, but difficult to answer…

I think when you ask you’re at the beginning stages of making creative work. You just don’t know where to start and want an quick answer. A starting point, a straight road. But the creative process is a crooked road, and sometimes a ditch is the best place to find inspiration and have a pick-nick at.

For me, I never follow a specific road and I don’t have many must-happen habits either. Its fairly simple, I sit down and experiment. Sometimes I love what comes out, sometimes I think it looks more like #fail. Either way, then I move on.

Some artists tell you their process and you can learn how they start. Always start with a basic light background colour, they might say. And if you listen to that you might think to yourself that that is the “right” way to do it. That you should always do this or that before you start sketching or adding your ephemera. But it is about preferences, habits, taste and needs. So even if I told you I always start with gesso you would have to try it yourself to know if it was “your way” too. If you are going to play with crayons you don’t need gesso at all. So I don’t always start with gesso. Sometimes I start with coffee, or tea, or stretching.

Also, my process is very intuitive. I create without much thinking. Sometimes I start with a few papers, found in my stash or laying on the table from previous day. I glue them down as I see fit. Sometimes with one or three colours painted at random on a card.

If you want beginnings I could give you a whole list, but the most important things is always to begin. To sit down with your materials and sort through them, then grab what feels right today.

Lately I’m grabbing the jar of yellow acrylic paint. My summer colour seam to be yellow. I mix it with green, I add it here and there. Sometimes I smear paint with my index finger. I’m using very small bits of this and that, sent to me from Hope or Tammy, printed labels from the internet, and butterflies.

The above card, made on July 9th, started in the garage where I sprayed red paint through a plastic letter stencil. Then I smeared on some more paint and when it was dry I added the collaged bits on top of that. My biggest secret are my personal handmade background papers, I think it’s so much fun to work with my own material these days. Thought magazine images are awesome too, of course.

My answer to the question: where to start? will always be: right here, right now. However you feel like in that moment, just do it! If you still don’t know, sit down and move things around on your desk until you just can’t stand it anymore, until you just have to add something, anything. Then you’re on a roll. And daily creating, like filling one of these index cards, helps too.