kartooner

On occa­sion it becomes dif­fi­cult con­jur­ing up a topic for this site and most of the time it just takes a small ses­sion of brain­storm­ing to get the cre­ative juices flow­ing. Same goes for my art­work, if I’m not in the mood or just don’t have the vibe it’s dif­fi­cult to draw any­thing with­out toss­ing a few crum­bled papers in the trash.

I find that with writ­ing, art or cre­ative expres­sion we all have our low­points. These occur on occas­sion and usu­ally don’t last, but there is a way to coun­ter­act this feel­ing of being uncre­ative or unin­spired. Brain­storm. Use that meaty sub­stance in your head and write down or sketch (artist or not) any thoughts that come to mind. Some­times you’ll find that one par­tic­u­lar thought will spark a series of cre­ative results.

Give it a try; find a lone piece of paper, lined or plain, and write down the first thought that comes to mind. For instance, I’m think­ing of a rural barn­house which makes me think of Charlotte’s Web, which in turn makes me think of spiders.

Now think of some­thing else and jot that down and pair it with your final thought, in my case spi­ders. At the moment I’m think­ing of cot­ton candy which I’ll then write next to the word spi­ders. If you want, you might even draw a crude doo­dle of your thought as I’ve done.

What’s impor­tant to remem­ber is to keep it sim­ple. That is, start sim­ple and build on that thought to cre­ate some­thing more com­plex, not the other way around. Even Mickey Mouse is con­structed by sim­ple oval shapes and then with a lit­tle color and refine­ment he comes to life.