Ignore Everybody, and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

MacLeod, a cartoonist and consultant to such companies as Cisco, Roche, Dewar's, GoDaddy through Gapingvoid.com as a culture builder, started out drawing cartoons on the back of business cards.  His unique viewpoint can be used by everyone - not just artists or super creative people.  His book - as the title suggests, is 40 short chapters, illustrated by his cartoons.  Chapters such as Being Poor Sucks; Beware of Turning Hobbies into Jobs, The Best Way to Get Approval is to Not Need It; Put the Hours In, Keep Your Day Job; Dying Young is Overrated ...Also check page 30 for the sex and cash theory. 

(pictures from the book)

No finished yarn projects.

I did do some colouring though!

was supposed to post on the 7th.

I attempted to make something I saw on Pinterest!

It's not really round, and apparently gluing is something that takes more skills than I have - but it didn't fall apart when I hung it on the Angie's door.  SO that's a win!

 

Trip to Philly

We drove down to Philly last Friday to spend the day with the Angie, she wanted to celebrate out anniversary with us.  She wanted to go to the Animals exhibit at the Franklin Museum, and since there was a Lego art exhibit there at the same time she knew she could lure me in.  The Lego art was amazing, although part of me feels that since most of his work is all one color lego, he kind of cheated - you know?  Also a lot of his stuff is copies of famous art pieces, also kind of cheating no?  Sorry if this post is too picture heavy, I put a page break in so you don't have to look if you don't want to... 14 shots in all


Loved Starry Night.


The Great Wave


The Stained Glass Window of Chatres used translucent blocks and left a pattern on the floor as well!

Doodling! I can get behind this idea!

Since I gave up my Creativity class, I found this book:

I like to doodle.  I don't really draw - most of my doodles aren't pictures of things they are usually geometric shapes that kind of grow outward.  I'm only on page 7, but Ms Brown makes some really good points in the first 6 pages.  Little kids don't draw well, but they enjoy doodling.  We're born knowing how to doodle.  We start to give up doodling as we get better at words and numbers.  Her thought is we gave up visual literacy when we acquired verbal and numerical literacy.  Her point is also with the data revolution and the sheer amount of data raw and analyzed, and needing to be analyzed, we can't afford to continue to be visually illiterate.  

I was drawn to this book, after taking the learning to learn course.  Doodling, abstractness and art help take your mental processes from focused thinking to diffuse thinking.  I have the perfect example from earlier today:  I saw a tweet which stated : There are 4 and only 4 countries on the planet whose name is only 1 syllable long.  It took about 5 seconds to come up with Spain. maybe another minute of mentally scanning the globe to come up with France.  both of these answers came through focused thinking.  I then had my attention drawn to the NASCAR race on tv, it took about one lap of the race for me to come up with Chad being a country in Africa. More laps went by, no idea of the 4th country.  I even tweeted that I was stuck on 3 countries.  I then made the bottom doodle, as the first exercise in the book.  As I started coloring Greece popped into my head.  Chad and Greece as answers ere both achieved through diffuse thinking.

Here is a TED talk - it's only about 5 minutes - that the author did a few years ago:



The bottom two figures are the doodles I did for the first exercise on page 7.  There were only 2 directives.  First, draw a continuous line without lifting your pen, that crosses itself occasionally for 10 seconds.  Second - shade sections that were enclosed shapes by these lines.   I chose to color them with highlighters, part of me is still 8, I like coloring.  The bottom doodle was done during the race, where Tony was running poorly (although before he got caught up in the big wreck) I was kind of stressed.  Drawing the weird shape did relax me - especially when Greece popped in my head.  Coloring it in really did lower my stress levels.  I did the top figure a couple hours after the race.  I had gone outside to clear the snow off my car for tomorrow morning (it is still snowing, but I figure this will be less snow tomorrow morning, I need to be at work at 530am)  So I was less stressed when I drew it. None the less, I could physically feel calmer, and less stressed  while I drew it.  By the time I got to color it, I was actually feeling happier.

There will be more updates on my doodling in the future. 

Disappointing Week for 2 New Classes, Astronomy and Creativity

Two new classes started on Coursera this week (well probably a ton more, but I'm taking two) .  The first class I was really excited about, ASTRONOMY: Exploring Time and Space.  It's out of the University of Arizona (my favorite astrophysics professor from college came from there) and Chris Impey, the professor has written books and won all kinds of fanfare over teaching astronomy.  It's a six week course, so realistically I do understand that there isn't going to be serious depth to the class, especially since there aren't any advanced maths required.  But the first week??  It felt like it was aimed at the fifth grade level!!  In his defense a lot of the first week was history- but that could have been made more interesting, the scientific method part seemed like he was directing it at all the people that didn't understand what a scientific theory worked, or how it was proven or needed revisions or disproven.  While not in so many words it felt like he was talking to creationists , explaining why creationism is not a theory. I'm giving him one more week.  Week two is about Telescopes and tools of astronomical exploration.  If I feel like I'm transported back to Mrs Barlow's science class again I'm dropping the class.

The second class, sounded like it had a ton of promise as well, Ignite your Everyday Creativity. I want to be a creative person.  Curt, a lot of my friends and people I work with think I'm a creative person, but I disagree.  Curt thinks that looking at random food in the kitchen and making dinner is creative, I don't see it that way.  I see it as once you made basic foodstuffs, I'm just popping different foods into the equation that seem like they'll work together, I have been wrong, not often, but usually in a spectacular fireworks kind of wrongness when I am.  People think my knitting is creative.  In reality, my knitting benefits from a lot of other creative people.  From people blending different breeds of wool, to spinning it at different twists and plies,  dyers who can figure out what colors will work well together in what amounts, pattern designers who write and tweak patterns.  All I do is find a yarn I like, find a pattern I like and cast on, usually if I'm doing something in more than one yarn I need Curt to help me figure out what would look good together.  Rather than creative, I'm more fearless, or more honestly, don't give a crap about other peoples opinions of me.  If I like something I'll wear it, I don't worry about neutral colors in my yarn, or if anyone else would wear _____ in those colors.  I'm not scared of making something horrible, if I don't like it, there is a garbage can and take out or delivery (the advantages of first world life - if I lived in the time and place of the pilgrims or Little House on the Prairie, I might worry about it a bit more).

I signed up for this class hoping to bring out some creativity, or learn how to at least.  OMG.  I can't begin to tell you, I got halfway through week one, will try to finish week one this week, but OMG.  First of all the professors have been snorting something, and I want some.  They are trying too too too hard to come across as fun? entertaining? hopefully not the creative I'm going for.  It's like watching