Although many people don’t consider themselves creative (which I don’t understand and even disagree with), inspiration and creativity are important to us.
Both the word inspiration and the word creativity are used in 2 ways. Physical versus mental.
Inspiration literally means inhalation on the one hand, expressiveness or divine force on the other. The latter is attributed by some to a higher power and by others called the flow or being in the zone.
During Covid-time (doesn’t that seem like a long time ago already?), I travelled virtually. I made dream boards about my bucket list of places to go to.
And as another replacement, I made reviews about travel destinations. For example, about the tourist attractions in Breda.
Breda is the hometown of both Tom and me. It is a cosy, provincial town with a beautiful historic centre.
In the months before we left Breda to emigrate to Spain, I wandered around a lot, already feeling like a tourist, taking loads of pictures.
An art journal can be created in 2 ways. The focus can be on images with added text. Or the focus can be on texts to which images are added.
That depends on your own preferences. Are you primarily visual or are you mostly text-oriented?
If you’re going to add text to an art journal, it’s a good idea to try both methods. As an artist, we sometimes have to step out of our comfort zone and challenge our personal preferences to take leaps forward.
In this article, I describe several ways to display text, but also to create text.
Isn’t it a pity that we tend to forget how to play? What do you think about playing on the beach for grown-ups? I can assure you that it is fun!
Years ago my former colleagues and I went to a beach house once a year to get creative inspiration.
We were all creative souls and we gave ourselves assignments to develop our creative skills even further. There I discovered again what fun it is to play on the beach.
There is a beautiful story about sharing food or ideas: if I have 2 potatoes and share them with a friend, we both have 1 potato. If I share 2 ideas with a friend, we both have 2 ideas.
Mutual inspiration is extremely nourishing and satisfying. An activity together with someone else, whether it is walking, doing crafts or talking, gives such a good feeling. After all, a human being is a social being and we better exploit that.
It doesn’t just happen out of the blue. If we want to do something together with someone, we have to take action. In this article, I explain how I do that.
At most of the exhibitions where I showed my work, I tried to be present to talk to the visitors. The most frequently asked question was: where do you find the inspiration for your subjects? To which my answer was that I had some tricks for that.
Developing inspiration is a conscious process. Or at least it could be. It also depends on our character what our favourite method is.
In this article, I give you 30 tips to spend your free time finding inspiration and spark your creativity. It is a random list of all kinds of things I occasionally do. Get inspired.
Usually, we find inspiration to make art when we are not looking for it. We are in the shower or preparing dinner and ideas pop into our heads. We walk through nature or in a city and are inspired by what we see or experience.
Then we are so in the flow that we do not need extra inspiration. At other times we have to consciously search for it because we want to create but just don’t know how and what. We’re stuck.
To get the inspiration process going, I’ll give you 12 tips in this article.
Is it necessary to have a Facebook account? When you have a creative hobby or profession and want to share your work with others, you need to be on social media.
So on which social media do you have to be and how do you make your presence successful?
In this article, I talk about Facebook and in another one, I gave a review of 365 Days of Facebook Success, which is a helpful tool.
If you are starting out building a social media presence, my recommendation is not to start on all the platforms you can find. It’s too overwhelming, trust me. Start with one, and once you get the hang of it, build from there by adding one other social medium at a time.
We do not always need a computer to create our ideas. Whether it is ideas for a design, a new product or a business plan. What opportunities are there to shape our ideas without a computer?
Of course, it’s marvellous if we have a computer with creative programs on it. After all, a computer is just a tool and above all, we should not attach too much importance to it.
Some people get crazy at the mere thought of living without a computer for some time or even a day. Yet we shouldn’t bring ourselves too dependent on technology, don’t you think? Although some of my tips do involve technology. 