Personalized creativity eventually becomes our style. Creating is learning, and learning means living more intense and enjoying something new every day, our personal way.
We create us
Any creation involves saying something about us. That’s how we are telling others what our point of view is. True creativity is never copying and reproducing, but taking an idea which lives in our imagination or was just born in our mind and bringing it to life.
Reproducing versus creating
I regret seeing how plenty of art instruction is meant to teach not principles, techniques and understanding, but to reproduce a popular concept or successful image which everybody is painting or drawing. We have numerous back-lit landscapes, starry nights, tree projections in the sky, human eyes and lips. A painting subject which is already so much worn down.
Personalized creativity
Creativity is great not because we can do things that other artists have done, but because we can create everything exactly as we want, as we have intended and imagined, and it becomes our personalized creativity.
If you can draw, you can draw anything.
We can use any subject and make it our own.
If you can paint, you can paint anything.
We can use any color and make it the most important color for us or the viewer.
We have endless opportunities to express ourselves.
Learning is an ongoing activity, and it’s erroneous to assume somebody knows everything about everything. Experiment is the best teacher of all: how do we know if we never try?
The helpful mistakes
Mistakes and errors are an essential part of the learning process. It’s silly to be afraid of mistakes and do nothing. Perfectionism most likely lives inside many minds, however, but that doesn’t mean anything less than perfect has no value.
The circle of knowledge
Imagine that everything you know is within a circle. As you grow older and become smarter, the circle grows and widens, too. However, the interesting thing is that the more we know, the longer becomes the line that borders the unknown space which surrounds the circle which contains our knowledge. That’s why we just keep finding out things that we were not aware of. That is also the reason for asking more questions and finding more answers.
Creative exploration
Exploration with pencil, brush and color goes a long way. There is no end to it. The more we have learnt, the more we become aware of things we still have no idea about. It makes sense to make your style very personal from the very beginning. You do not want to be the second if you can be the first one. Therefore, copying art is not a good practice. You would not copy somebody else’s poem or song? Would you? The same is true about art.
Some of my recent watercolor paintings:
Art blog articles versus photo blogs
I have been on and off from blogging due to personal matters, but, hopefully, I will manage to post something more during the upcoming months. Painting takes much longer than to write an article, a short poem or to snap a photo. I sometimes spend months on a single painting. I could post progress images, but when I have the momentum, I do not want to interrupt it. Sketches and drawings might take just a few hours. However, such photos need to be edited and adjusted to be visible.
Slow spring
Spring is slow in Southern Ontario, but the first blooms are already in buds. and I saw a few crocuses showing their lovely colors outside. Their colors were bright and intense. Spring rewards us with intense colors and fresh air. There is always 1 hour or a bit more to spend with beauty and colors. It isn’t even that hard to find that hour.
Part of my art for sale: Available paintings
My artistic products on Fine Art America, and you can view them in 3 D, rotate and turn upside down, etc.:
Decorate with beautiful art for spring season!
Dear Inese, I love your inspiring post on creativity! I also believe that the beauty of art is that you can create anything. You can draw anything, you can paint anything or create anything that you see in your mind’s eye.
Your paintings are so beautiful! Wishing you lots of inspiration and most of all, time, to do your beautiful art!
Have an amazing and inspired day!
Thanks so much, Michelle! It’ s always a pleasure to exchange some thoughts with you and to hear from you! I’ ve been blogging for many years, since 2011 I believe. I have noticed that every time I had to put off posting new articles or paintings it was difficult to get back to normal rhythm again. I have been thinking that the time period between last May and this April was a tough one. It had happened before, but this time, it was difficult to put myself back together. I have finally started larger pieces, too, and I hope I can restart selling something. Well, I was off so often that I was basically not visible for longer time. That’s not good, but can be improved. I also feel like there is no point in trying too hard. I used to be very much right on everything, but I’m viewing that as an unnecessary rushing and pushing now. I’ll focus on main things more.
These are so beautiful Inese – what a gift and talent. I loved your ‘circle’ metaphor – it’s perfect!
Thanks dear Deb! I think all we can do is just try more and do better every single time!
Wow beautiful art
Thanks! I’ve been doing this for half a century.