My creative habit: One of my favorite creative habits is to "build a bridge" to the next day's work. I try to leave my work at a place where it will be easy to start the next time. Who wants to pick up a project and spend time right away thinking about what to do next? I like to ease into it. When I'm handsewing, I always end by threading a needle & knotting the thread, so that I'll be ready to start stitching right away. When I'm working on a scrapbook page, I might set out some photos but not glue them down.
For my A to Z book, I try to sketch the next letter's title block in pencil, and then lightly ink over it so that I can begin by erasing and adding colored pencil. This habit is like a warm-up for my mind and my hands, a chance to stretch without requiring a lot of mental effort from the get-go. The hard part is making yourself stop when you're in the middle of something good!
I *REALLY* love the way this year's A to Z is going so far. It's lovely and very personal. And I love the idea of "building a bridge"- I need to try that. My problem is I tend to want things "encapsulated"- like when I sit down to work on my art journal, I want it to capture THAT MOMENT and not a splash of something I put down a few days earlier. But I have a paralyzing fear of blank pages, so I think a "bridge" would be tremendously useful.
Posted by: chel | Oct 13, 2011 at 10:28 AM