Creativity Activation

IP009 - 12/08/2017

IP008 - 11/08/2017

2 things are clear after today’s session of 3 drawings: I am slowly going from trying to complete clear/realistic shapes to going for similar patterns and trying to make things “pretty”. I use colours that I feel go together, I make little gradients so it’s more in harmony. The only part of this drawing where this didn’t happen is that bold red stroke on the right-hand side. Before drawing it I was already realizing the above and so instead of carefully picking a colour I closed my eyes and picked the first colour I encountered. Call it a sign, I picked a very bright red, the boldest of colours! So I know what to do now...

IP007 - 11/08/2017

Today I converted someone to Intuitive Painting! I explained what I was doing every day to my sister and we painted together. She was so into it that we each drew 3 pages. She agreed it was very liberating and meditative and will probably do more. I have not done much yet but I can only recommend this exercise! You will forget everything for a few moments and it feels great!

IP006 - 11/08/2017

IP005 - 10/08/2017

Today’s realization: I seem to always start in the same place, like a safe way to go, like it can’t go wrong because it didn’t go that wrong before. So for today’s drawing I purposely started on the right-hand side instead of the left. I shall try to start in a different place each time to teach my mind variety and change, so it gets used to it.

IP004 - 09/08/2017

As yesterday, I felt much more confident doing the second IP of the day, like the first one is a warm up which is encouraging in a way: if I feel an improvement from an IP to the next in the same day, I should see some great improvement during this whole year of IP-ing!

IP004 - 09/08/2017

Second day of Intuitive Painting! The meditative state it puts me in is enough in and of itself to make me want to continue but the real reason is creativity activation and painting today I am realizing that I have a lot of work to do! The reason I say this is because I can feel that as soon as I put colour on the paper, my logical brain wants to see something specific in it and I not-so-unconsciously start completing the shapes to fit that logical image whereas perhaps developing my creativity is more about accepting complete abstraction and completely letting go rather than logically finishing pictures? 

IP002 - 08/08/2017

IP001 - 08/08/2017

My very first Intuitive Painting (IP) ! I used promarkers mainly because that’s all I had but it was a good thing because I like how colours can blend a bit.

I was a little apprehensive with the first lines but very quickly got into it and it is oh so meditative! I have no idea exactly how long I took to make this but I was feeling a bit...somewhere else and it felt great. I have no real insight or analysis into the colours or shapes I used, I can just say that sometimes changing colour felt right and some other times I thought having deeper contrast was what I needed to do. I don’t recognize specific shapes into the final piece and at this stage I am not sure whether I should analyze what I make or just let it evolve as I paint. It just feels right to draw with no intention whatsoever and perhaps giving it a more concrete meaning would feel like it spoils the whole experience.

The point was to let my brain do its thing, let it express itself and it doesn’t matter that I don’t understand it, or perhaps don’t understand it yet, the aim is not the translation, just the letting go.

I am on a quest to massively improve my creativity! I want my brain to produce its best work yet and I know it needs a little push and a little encouragement so I am starting a new experiment: one whole year of intuitive painting. 365 drawings/paintings that will probably look like nothing but will hopefully teach me a lot about juice flowing and letting go. I will teach my brain what real mind freedom looks like and it might get ugly, it might get dark, it might even get pretty but that’s certainly not the point.

Intuitive painting is exactly what it sounds like: get a piece of paper, get a box of crayons or pastels and just draw/paint until the paper is completely covered and with no intention of actually drawing something concrete or remotely realistic. It’s all about creative abstraction, that’s how you learn to really hear and see what your beautiful brain has to offer.