How To Optimize Your Creative Process
How do you optimize your creative process? I work with mixed media collage and today I’m giving this art tutorial on how to use your sketchbook to optimize your learning and your growth as an artist. What will really optimize what you learn in one painting so that you can be sure to take it forward into your next creative project is to spend time contemplating what you’ve learned, how you identified problems, and how you solved them. This time spent is not wasted time, it’s truly optimized!
Here are a few of the things I spend time contemplating and documenting in a fun, creative way in my sketchbook:
What were the problems with the painting?
- Did I successfully identify a few of the issues that were keeping the painting out of balance?
- What were my attempted solutions and did they work?
What were my internal obstacles?
How did those thoughts/emotions affect my decisions?
What were my solutions to those internal obstacles?
What are my favorite elements in this painting?
- Color combos
- Composition elements
- Subject matter
- Happy accidents
- Textures
- Marks
What ideas does this painting spark? What seems possible that maybe didn’t before?
If I wanted to do this painting on a larger scale, how do I attempt that?
- How do I use papers on a larger scale?
- How will I re-create the loose brush marks on a larger scale?
- How do I scale up marks made with graphite, crayon or colored pencil?
Spending time answering these questions and actually making the notes takes your learning process further. The simple process of contemplating and answering the questions, and then the tactile process of writing them down, or making marks or gluing collage to notate materials that worked will create a deeper and richer context for creating the next time you work.
Video Chapters:
0:00 Introduction to Sketchbook Project Review
1:13 What kind of artist this exercise works great for
2:03 Using the Seawhite Concertina Sketchbook for project evaluation
4:20 How I lay it out and organize it
5:03 Some of the things I write about and document in the processing exercise
8:50 How this process takes your development into new areas of growth
10:25 Why this type of contemplation ‘finishes’ the learning process and allows you to move forward
If you'd like to learn more about my new class Mixed Media Collage and the Intuitive Landscape, you can find info here:
https://www.marabethquinart.com/intuitive-landscape-class
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If you'd like to order the sketchbook I'm using in the video, you can use my affiliate link or simply search for the name yourself on Amazon:
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