ITAP Lecture 6: Production & Outcomes

The most vital thing for any artist or visual creative is to be continuously drawing. It is only by putting pen to paper, as it where, that you can truly engage your physical working with your creative brain. It is the most productive form of creating thinking as only by actually ‘doing’, combining thinking with mark making that can you begin to be relay creative and explore and discover new ideas as well as working methods. Furthermore when you remove the idea of  ‘drawing for ideas and not for art’ is the hand and mind completely free to work creatively without over anylising or judging critically. When you work in this way

Some one who work’s really effectively recording playing and freely drawing is the graffiti artist and illustrator Mr Kern. His sketchbook is filed with weird and wonderful character designs, experimenting with objects and shapes and sizes. Sprawled across the pages are quick light line drawings and sketches progressing to more detailed designs to final outcomes. Page one shows the barest and simplest of drawings and wonderfully shows a real insight into the creative mind of the artist as well as the creative process he explores.  

Another way to dramatically improve the way you think creatively in to understand and implement the different uses of the two halves of your brain. The right half of your brain is compared to a child at play, carefree, experimental and inquisitive. The over half, the left side, is far more concerned with clarifying and editing. It is the part of your brain that analyses and judges your creativity. To work creatively and successfully we need to be in tune with using both sides of our brains effectively. The creative process is essentially your brain flicking from one side to the other, the right side playing and the left side analyzing. While it is important to be free and playful, if we use the right side too much and abandon reason our work wouldn’t be able to develop and improve. Equally if we continuously over use our left-brain and are over critical or become too concerned with what we are producing (in the experimental stage) we would suppress our ability to be creative.  By successfully using both sides we play and create but with reason and direction.

An example of the right and left-brain working together in quite a simple way is bellow, a page from the sketchbook of graffiti artist Duncan Jago.  Here he has simple sketches developed into more detailed drawings that still experiment with mark making and design. He has also annotated his work limitedly, and jotted down questions and thoughts about where he could take the work or possible additions. More so, around the images he has began incorporating possible choices of colour. On the left hand page the blocks of colours are more experimental, just trying things out on the page and seeing what happens. Where as on the right you can see a more thought out process has been used, mixing colours to create the different tones.