When meeting new people, I am always curious when someone tells me they are not creative. If you’ve followed me awhile, you know I think everyone is creative. We’re born with it, but somewhere along our journey the creativity shifts. Most little children love to color/scribble on things. So where does it all go with those proclaiming “I don’t have a single creative bone in their body.”
I think it goes to other things. I am a left brain/right brain kind of person. I majored in environmental biology and wildlife science in college. And, in past careers, I worked as a field biologist, web developer and technical editor.
All of these interests remain part of who I am, but I can see in each how my creative thinking assisted me. I’m a visual learner. When I work on technical tasks, I look for visual and rhythmic (e.g., repeating) patterns. Its a very creative way to get things accomplished.
When I have down time, I like to work on projects that are mindless…but have a rhythm to them. Knitting is a good example of my “to go” projects. There’s a rhythmic beat to knitting (e.g, “knit one, purl two, repeat”). When I take me scribble sampler with me, I’ve noticed that I look for patterns in the stitches and how I place colors or objects. I start kind of random, but as the project advances I’m thinking balance. “Do I have too much pink on one side or the other?” “Should there be more or less open space exposing the background fabric.” It is analytical thinking because I’m looking for patterns.
This all came to me this week while I sat at the dealer waiting for my car to get serviced. I like to bring something to occupy my time while I’m waiting. This time I brought my scribble sampler and it had me thinking. I wonder, do you bring a project with you to work on while you’re waiting?
When I taught high school art we had a right brain unit and part of that included looking at the stages of children’s art. Students would laugh at little circle hands that a toddler might draw but became more serious as we looked at the progression of drawing through middle or jr. high age. Many would exclaim that they LOVED drawing when they were little but stopped at some point. Why? Sometimes it was because they were just so hard on themselves as they strived for perfect drawings. Sometimes an adult or classmates made fun of their work and they quit. We would then discuss getting past those old feelings and starting fresh by learning new methods and expanding old ones, and that might take some courage. And a lot of practice but it could be done. And most of the time it was!
Thank you for sharing!! I’m glad you were there for your students to encourage them to continue. Getting past old feelings is great advice. I’ve done my own fair share of self-counseling through this journey.