Practical Tools and Wise Quotes on All Matters Creative

Art streaming

Creative tools > Art streaming

When to use it | How to use it | Example | How it works | See also

When to use it

Use it when you are are stuck and are stuck in a rut of constrained thinking.

Use when you need to find more ideas.

Use it when you are more introverted, and verbal streaming is too uncomfortable.

Use it when you are trying to be artistically creative and are creatively blocked.

Use it when you are not artistic too. It is the mental results that are important, not the artwork.

How to use it

Go hide somewhere

Find a place where you can be alone for a good deal of time. Make it somewhere comfortable, where you can write. Take lots of paper or canvasses (old ones are probably a good idea) and a variety of paints, brushes, pens, pencils, spatulas and so on. You can also take modeling clay, wood, wire or other material with which you can create sculptures.

Create, non-stop

Now just paint away. Or model away. Or sculpt away. Do not worry about the quality of what you are doing. The goal is not to create artwork you will show or sell. Let your subconscious create whatever is on your mind. Just see what appears.

When a canvas is full or a model is complete, you can leave it and do another or start again with the same materials. The goal is to keep going rather than to create anything in particular. If you like what you have done, then put it aside, by all means. Just keep going.

When you are done, you can muse over what you have created, if you wish, and wonder what your subconscious is trying to say. Or you can just scrap it.

Example

I am feeling frustrated by creative problems at work. I get home and head for the garage and get out the wood and powertools. I spend the evening carving, cutting, sawing, chiseling, screwing and gluing. The result is a strange set of what could be called sculptures. By the time I go to bed, I'm feeling much better and some useful ideas are trickling through.

How it works

This approach works by giving the conscious mind something to do that allows the subconscious mind to free itself of what is concerning it. Worries and ideas can all come out in the artwork. And amongst the weeds, fruitful flowers of ideas can also pop up as you keep creating.

It is known that in brainstorming, that good ideas appear randomly as long as you keep going. The same is true in art. If you keep daubing long enough, good stuff will appear.

See also

Talk streaming, Write streaming, Incubation, Modeling, Exploration