Conscious Creativity: Look, Connect, Create - Softcover

Stanton, Philippa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782406344 ISBN 13: 9781782406341

Verlag: Leaping Hare Press, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

“Full of tips and tricks on how to look at the world with a curious eye, it’s a brilliant way to breathe creativity (back) into our lives.” – Flow magazine

“Crammed with practical ideas, inspirational images & creative exercises, Conscious Creativity leads the reader through the process of establishing what kind of creative you are...”–Mslexia

“The purpose of this book is to enable you to look at things in an alternative and more substantial way, so that you arrive at composition through genuine interest.”–Juno magazine

“Philippa Stanton is passionate about people connecting to their innate creativity and has distilled these incredible techniques and ideas on how we can tap into that. Philippa is a massively successful Instagramer at @5ftinf and yet she is only too aware how these little two dimensional squares can limit our experiences and restrict our creativity, so it’s not without a little irony that she’s written a book to encourage people to step away from their screens and connect more with the 3D world. It’s a fascinating subject and I wholeheartedly recommend the book for anyone who’s working in the creative industry or is curious about the world around them.”–Sophie Robinson (DIY SOS, The Great British Interior Design Challenge, This Morning)


Unlock your creative potential with Conscious Creativity: a practical, playful guide bursting with inspiration to help bring more colour into to your life.

There is creativity in all of us, but it can easily be buried beneath our everyday concerns or need a spark to bring it back to life. Whether you’ve lost your mojo or just need some fresh ideas, artist and photographer Philippa Stanton’s lively guide will stimulate your imagination and reinvigorate your creative life.

Engage your curiosity and connect your observations to your creative practice with activities such as:

• Noticing all the hues of one colour you can see around you
• Creating an abstract textured image using herbs, spices and other dry ingredients from your kitchen cupboards
• Collecting shadows: photograph hidden shapes and dark spaces that you haven’t noticed before

Conscious Creativity will help you open your senses to the beauty you may not notice every day, and show you how to capture it. Simple, engaging exercises that encourage observation and experimentation will give you an insight into your own aesthetics as you take a conscious step to note the colours, shapes, shadows, sounds and textures that fill your world, and how they make you feel.

Bursting with practical ideas and inspirational images, embrace the joy of creating, and learn to use your natural curiosity to take a leap into the most creative time of your life.

If you like this, you might also like Creative Flow and Nature Tonic.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Philippa Stanton is a professional artist and photographer with more than 20 years' experience of creating and teaching art. She holds popular workshops and teaches courses online. Clients attracted by her work have been as diverse as Green & Black's chocolate, travel company Tui and The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group. Philippa lives in Brighton, UK. She is the author of Conscious Creativity (2018) and Conscious Creativity: The Workbook (2020).Instagram: @5ftinf

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How often do you notice the texture of a painted wall or the scent of a friend’s house and, importantly, how they make you feel? Connect your observations and your emotions and transform your creative practice with this essential toolbox packed full of exercises, tips, stunning images and personal experiences from dynamic artist Philippa Stanton.

There is creativity in all of us, but it can easily be buried beneath our everyday concerns, or need a spark to bring it back to life. Whether you’ve lost your mojo or just need some fresh ideas, artist and photographer Philippa Stanton’s lively guide will stimulate your imagination and reinvigorate your creative life.

Conscious Creativity will help you fully appreciate what is around you, opening all your senses to the beauty you may not notice every day, and showing you how to capture it. Simple, engaging exercises that encourage observation and experimentation will give you an insight into your own aesthetics as you take a conscious step to note the colours, shapes, shadows, sounds and textures that fill your world and how they make you feel.

Bursting with practical ideas and inspirational images, Conscious Creativity shows you how to unlock your potential, learn to use your natural curiosity and take a leap into the most creative time of your life.

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Conscious Creativity

Look, Connect, Create

By Philippa Stanton

The Quarto Group

Copyright © 2018 Philippa Stanton
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78240-634-1

Contents

Introduction, 6, 
1 What Sort of Creative Are You?, 10, 
2 Structure, Practice and Obstacles, 20, 
3 Looking, 40, 
4 Documenting, 52, 
5 Texture and Wabi Sabi, 60, 
6 Colour, 70, 
7 The Senses and Synaesthesia, 86, 
8 Atmosphere and Nothing, 106, 
9 Light and Shadow, 116, 
10 Abstract, 128, 
11 Composition, 142, 
12 Continuing Practice and Personal Projects, 152, 

CHAPTER 1

What Sort of Creative Are You?

Focusing and grounding your initial journey through investigation and instinct

Being creative and curious is a fundamental part of being a human being - we are all hard-wired to invent, explore and experiment - however, before you throw yourself into a frenzy of creative activity, it will be useful first to determine the type of creative you are.

You may feel intimidated by creativity or you may feel that you have it in abundance. You might feel you need to work out how to access your creative potential or you may think that you're not creative at all. You might even feel that all this focus on creativity is a load of nonsense. Working out what type of creative person you are does not mean you're making a decision that is set in stone, but it is something that will help you focus your initial journey.

As babies, creativity is our default setting, and at some point in our early development we will all have used our senses and instincts to survive and learn without the hindrance of intellectual analysis. Babies and toddlers are always exploring, putting everything into their mouths to investigate new textures, tastes and shapes. They develop their communication skills by trying out different sounds and they often discover their own sense of expression by simple mark making - sometimes with a lipstick all over the sofa or a felt-tip pen on a wall.

A baby will grab at a potted plant because it looks interesting and new. If it topples over and spills out they start playing with the soil, eating it, feeling it, pulling the remaining plant apart and sitting proudly in the centre of their efforts. What has been 'created' might seem to be a complete mess, but it's also an innocent and informative investigation. Artists and babies often both share that similar quality of freedom. They express themselves in ways relevant to who they are and how they feel. They make their marks and their sounds because they want to, because they're trying something new and have something they want to say.

Being creative isn't specifically about tuning into your inner child, but this book will encourage you to observe the world around you with a level of interest akin to that of a child. It's about reconnecting with the inquisitiveness, observation and instinct found in infancy, which we often lose sight of as we become adults.

Before embarking on any course of action, it's always useful to question why you're actually doing it, what you'd like to get out of it and how you feel about it. Asking what type of creative person you think you are makes you consider yourself and your abilities and will help you to follow and develop a particular path or completely change it. Question what you think you already know and often your quickest and most instinctive responses will be the most insightful ones. The questions in this chapter are designed to enlighten you in a very simple way, rather than encourage any negative feelings, which can assassinate good ideas, particularly in their nascent stage.

There are no right or wrong answers here, it's just a very simple and personal investigation for you to reflect on and consider, and if more complicated thoughts or questions emerge, it will be interesting to think about those too. It's also useful to actually write your answers down, as a first commitment. Just thinking the answers in your head is an intellectual cop-out.

The type of creative person you view yourself as will probably change and develop over the course of the book, so to ask the question now means that you'll be able to compare your responses at a later stage. And finally, it's important to answer honestly and not in a way that you'd like to be perceived.

Ever since I was a child, I've always had lots of questions, and still do, often to the irritation of family and friends. When I was little our Young People's Encyclopaedia was always quickly exhausted. For example, it couldn't answer 'What is that jelly stuff inside a bubble of seaweed called?' As there was no internet, I'd have to ask my parents and brother all my questions and after a while my mum would often say, 'Actually, I don't know. Shall we go to the library and look it up?' You assume that your parents' knowledge will never run dry, but my mum would not only admit that she didn't know something, she would actively show an interest in discovering an answer.

Not knowing something is a brilliant route to creative discovery and even though nowadays we can look things up quickly online, how we find those answers and what those answers then lead us on to discover is a fascinating wormhole of creativity in itself.

Like any other discipline across the board, creativity is something that needs to be practised and exercised; the more you engage with the practice, the more you will get from it, and you will learn to trust your own way of doing things and your own way of seeing the world. Even if you feel chaotic, underprepared and unproductive at first, experimentation and questioning are never wasted and everyone, at any level, needs to practise. Doing things you don't want to do, or don't like, will often prove far more productive than constantly focusing on the things you find easy. The great thing about creativity is that pushing boundaries is so accessible and solutions are infinite.

We are all drawn to particular aesthetics and we each have feelings about how things should look or be done, even if we don't know why or how to do them ourselves. We all have our preferred colours, fabrics, buildings, interiors, landscapes - all of which personally resonate with us. Most of the time those aesthetic preferences are taken for granted and not picked apart; it's just something we live with and know.

As a synaesthete my relationship to words and numbers also connects to aesthetics. Synaesthesia, which is very basically a merging of the senses (and which you'll discover more about in Chapter 7), opens up a sort of parallel world of inner abstraction. I can attribute moving forms, shapes, textures and colours to my sensory experiences as well as other concepts like maths and musical notation. For me the number '2' is a sort of golden yellow colour. '7' is also yellow, but a lighter shade with a bit of white inside and a bright sort of glowing edge.

All my numerical colours are important to me, although as my mathematical father regularly pointed out, have absolutely no relevance to any answers. I was never good at maths. I was far too interested in the shapes and colours of the questions. My processing never seems to be logical; it's long-winded and overly colourful. But I've worked out over the years that this is basically who I am, and I have to live and work with that rather than trying to change it.

I would argue that taking time to consider our personal aesthetic preferences is key to grounding ourselves creatively. Knowing what your likes and dislikes are, along with your...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Leaping Hare Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1782406344
• ISBN 13: 9781782406341
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar