photo by laurenmanning
This is the second part of a series on how to set up a mini-retreat that indulges and focuses your creativity. Today we’ll talk about exploring a new medium, which is a valuable exercise you can choose to do during your creative mini-retreat.
1. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Introduction
2. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Exploring a New Medium
3. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Journaling and Visioning
4. How to Make Your Own Creative Mini-Retreat: Creating Tangible Inspiration
I’ve written before about consuming outside your normal medium in order to inspire new ideas. If you’re a photographer, for example, try reading fiction for inspiration. Today’s post is about creating outside your normal medium.
Exploring a new medium often feels exciting, awkward, or both. The combination of a need to perform well and a lack of experience leads to paralysis, leading a lot of people to drop the exercise after a first attempt. This post will walk you through it so you can keep the excitement and drop the awkwardness.
What Medium Should You Try?
Here are some two-dimensional visual media for all you writers and craftsy types to try:
- sketching
- painting
- collage-making
Those of you who regularly work in the media above should try crafting with your hands:
- clay
- papier mâché
- finger painting
And for those who normally shy away from the written word, here are some ideas:
- freewriting (writing without pausing to censor, edit, or rephrase yourself)
- journal writing
- poetry and writing exercises (see below)
If you choose to do poetry and writing exercises, here are a few ideas:
- Choose an object and begin to describe it for someone who has absolutely no idea what it is. If you choose a chair, describe its contours, its color, its feel, and how it’s used.
- Write a poem with alliteration: the loose luscious lions leapt leisurely to the left. Remember to focus on the sound and feel of the words, not whether or not you’re writing a masterpiece.
- Check out this resource for more ideas.
You certainly don’t have to choose one of the media listed above, but make sure that whatever you choose allows you to create something immediately, and allows you to create freely even without talent or prior experience. For example, photography doesn’t allow you to immediately build on what you’re creating (Polaroids are expensive, and we don’t want to be creating on Photoshop!), and knitting requires training and doesn’t allow you to improvise freely.
Stop Trying to Create Something Beautiful
This is the number one rule to keep in mind. You are exercising different muscles of your creativity — not trying to create something beautiful. If you do create something beautiful, that’s wonderful, but we’re going to concentrate on the act of creating more than the resulting creation.
Let me tell you the story of my own awkward-turned-exciting venture into a new medium.
I sat down to sketch with a couple different pencils and a little sketchpad, and I immediately felt really stilted. I was embarrassed by the juvenile sketches appearing on the page, and my pencil strokes felt wrong. I was about to abandon the exercise and go back to my laptop, but then I thought, “Who cares? No one’s watching.” The trick is to just let yourself feel stupid. No one else is going to see this, so who cares what shows up on the page? Once I adopted this attitude, my pencil flowed much more easily. This doesn’t mean I thought my drawings were any good, but they began to follow thought patterns.
I decided to sketch a path through wilderness that would reflect where I am and the directions I choose — if you think that sounds unbearably corny, bear with me. It was a basic drawing with fields, a hill, and a really big mountain that turned into a tree. Next to the tree there was an ocean, immensely full but that I hadn’t dared to jump in yet. The little figure that represented me was standing in the tree’s branches. As I continued drawing, the roots of the tree started pulling sideways, and I found myself drawing them under the ocean. I continued with the sketch and let it flow, all the while realizing that I’ve been intimidated by a certain vastness of possibilities for my future, when I really need to just jump in and find those roots. A mini-epiphany on a mini-retreat.
But it doesn’t have to be about epiphanies. Sometimes when I sketch, I end up with a few pages of mediocre drawings but a mind full of captivating ideas for writing. Exercising new muscles of your creativity is the whole point.
If you choose to explore a new medium as part of your creative mini-retreat, you may feel inspired to work in your normal medium after some time — let yourself make that transition. The mini-retreat aims to expand your creativity in a flowing manner, so allowing your creativity to glide from one intensive activity into another might just feel right.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I would love to paint. Even more, I would love to cook. I think I could make art in the kitchen if I had the time and space. Working with flowers was also a phenomenal way to feed my right brain.
Writer Dad´s last blog post..7 Steps to Squeaky Clean Copy
Ooh I am so fired up by this idea! I’m feeling all tangled up writing wise, so I think I am going to set aside a chunk of time on Friday just for this. The idea of making a collage leapt out at me like panther from the bushes, and the thought of just sketching without care is appealing too. Yay!
Emma Newman´s last blog post..Persistence really is everything
I like your point on the act of creating more than the resulting creation.
That’s where goodness happens.
J.D. Meier´s last blog post..Life Experiences and Leadership
{ 2 trackbacks }