The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business.
Teresa Amabile
One of the themes in my current Art Journals are patterns. The past two years I’ve, without consciously thinking about it, created a lot of pattern. It wasn’t a decision, it just happened. But now that I look back, I can see the theme, much as is true with photography. Patterns emerge when you take a step back.
My Art Journal is becoming a book of patterns.
There are lines, rows, and lots of circles. Hearts, flowers and dots…
Rows of circles. Rows of hearts. Happy patterns, because creating patterns makes me happy. Here is the full spread:
And a thought:
And another thought: if you allow anything to happen in the same book, the “main book” of Art Journaling that you’re working in, different patterns/themes will emerge in it. If you decide from the beginning on a theme, it’s going to contain only that theme. The natural flow of the daily creativity won’t happen, because the book has it’s own rules. Do you agree, or do you have another experience of themed art journaling?
Um, I’ve never done art journaling but I have many creative hobbies, and I think that I half-way agree with your final statement. I think that it is necessary to be open and to let things flow with art, kind of letting yourself be guided with creativity. For example, several times over the past 10 years I’ve felt compelled to paint and then after a few months have totally lost interest. And I agree that oftentimes a pattern will emerge, in my case for example I’ve consistently created patchwork with bright fabrics. However, I think that it’s also important to have constraints when working in art; Biz Stone wrote a lot about this in his book ‘Things a Little Bird Told Me” and he explains it in the context of Twitter; people become more creative when they are constrained to use only 152 characters. Anyway, my thoughts ~
This post made me think of a book about art and creativity called “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art” by Stephen Nachmanovitch. He devotes a whole chapter to the value of limits and constraints in creativity. He says:
“Artists often find themselves working with tricky tools and intractable materials, with their inherent quirks, resistances, inertias, irritations. Sometimes we damn the limits, but without them art is not possible. They provide us with something to work with and against. In practicing our craft, we surrender to letting the materials dictate the design.”
He also has a chapter on surrender.
Hanna, I love your patterns! Anytime I try to do patterns in my art journal [my first one, I might add. *Smile*] … I can only ever think of a few of them to do. Think I’m still at the stage that a blank page kinda is scary. lol
Have a nice day!
Debi