Books about creativity

I love reading books about creativity, it’s so interesting to get a peek into other artist’s creative process, thoughts around creativity, techniques, workspace and inspiration. Here’s what’s on my bedside table just now.

4 Inspiring Books About Creativity

• Taking Flight: Inspiration And Techniques To Give Your Creative Spirit Wings by Kelly Rae Roberts. Beautiful mixed-media techniques and projects as well as thought-provoking prompts and quotes to give your creative spirit wings.
• Living the Creative Life: Ideas and Inspiration from Working Artists by Ricë Freeman-Zachery. A true gem of a book based on interviews with 15 very interesting and different artists on topics like the muse, creative blocks, keeping a sketchbook and prioritising your art. The first two books on the list are recommendations from artist Dana Barbieri, whose blog Create Share Inspire is full of inspiration.
• Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art by Ricë Freeman-Zachery. A priceless book that puts the idea of making time and space at the core of creativity. It’s not just about managing your time or setting up a studio space in a way that suits you, it’s about your mindset, mental space and soul space, and about making room in your life for your art. Illuminating!
• The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor by Gail McMeekin. An empowering guide to maximizing your creative energy.

And a Silver Bookmark

Sterling silver bookmarks by Amy Ambroult of Elemental

These books about doing what I love mean so much to me that I think they deserve a very special bookmark and I’ve settled for a bookmark made by talented metalsmith Amy Ambroult of Elemental, who makes beautiful jewelry and three sterling silver bookmarks that adorn your books like a jewel. Isn’t her work simply amazing!?

I think I’ll pick the heart! And to thank my readers for all your support, I’ll buy one bookmark for one of you. All you need to do is comment on this post and tell me which your favourite book is (it can be on any topic), and which of Amy’s bookmarks you’d like!

The last day to participate will be the same day that the icon contest closes, on Friday 19th of March.

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about my photography and here’s the scoop. All of the photos on my blog are shot with my iPhone. I often use an app called CameraBag that recreates the magic of film without all the chemicals needed to manually use and develop film. There aren’t any settings or choices for each filter, you just decide which vintage camera you’d like to use, some of my favourites are the instant camera (that I used for this Polaroid of vintage graffiti), as well as the Lomo (in action in these over-saturated photos) and Holga (that I used to put a dark and moody edge on some of my summer photography). But sometimes I don’t use any additional software at all. Just raw iPhone photography, iPhoneography.

Tulips at night

Last night I thought this bunch of tulips might wilt before I got round to taking some photos of it, so I took a few pictures with the camera in my iPhone, although it was almost midnight and the camera doesn’t have a flash. Tulips are an early sign of spring for me, even if you have to buy them at the store because the ground is still deep with snow and it’ll be months before they blossom here! I find these tulips so inspiring, but with all the excitement over Apple’s new iPad and the administration and economy that I handle at the end of each month I’m way too busy to do much more than capture them on film.

Blurred tulips

I really like the rough quality that the low-quality camera of a mobile device can bring out! And the immediacy. There’s something very appealing to me in this blurred photo of tulips. Perhaps it’s the almost painterly quality… Normally I wouldn’t post this photo, but seeing as I’m talking about photography, and some of the unexpected beauty of the imperfections of lo-fi photography, I did.

I absolutely refuse to spend time in Photoshop editing photos. If I’m going to be creating using my computer as a tool, I’d prefer to work on my own art. There’s something endlessly satisfying about the simplicity of lo-fi photography, trusting the moment, seeing what happens. Finding moments of serendipity. It’s a liberating contrast to the sometimes laborious methods involved in designing icons and the endless and complicated options and settings available in the tools of my trade, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

I first got an iPhone because I was designing icons for the platform and I needed to see what they actually looked like in their own environment. At the time, I’d never guessed what a huge inspiration the iPhone turned out to be for me! A digital playground and a canvas to experiment with and to capture ideas with the built in camera, notes and voice memos. It’s become the place where my creative process often begins. But my favourite source of creativity on my iPhone is finger painting with Brushes! More about that another day!

These birches grow in the park behind the bus stop. It looks like the branches are sugar-coated! Although it was dark I had to pull out my camera. The photos are in colour but the landscape is in black and white. Monochrome. This scene makes me think of woodblock printing, linocuts, engraving and etching. And again, I’m inspired to create patterns for fabrics.

Scottish Fold

And now there are more kittens in the litter. Pleased to introduce this marmalade tabby, an illustration of a  Scottish Fold.

Expanding, meeting new friends, participating in group projects and finding inspiration. Closing in to focus on personal projects and deep connections with both online and offline friends and loved ones. And to swing back and forth between expanding and finding focus. Last year was an expanding year for me, this year I intend to be focused and yet open.

This extraordinarily snowy winter we’ve been giving different kinds of snow names. Feather snow, icing sugar, ice mist, castor sugar, sea salt flakes, snowball snow, movie snow… It’s been playful and imaginative.

I enjoy studying thoughts and ideas, the origin of words, to broaden my knowledge and explore the background. This winter I found out that it’s it’s a popular urban legend that the Inuit or Eskimo have an unusually large number of words for snow. And here I’d been saying “did you know that the Inuit have lots of words for snow!”…

“Green is not a colour it’s a state of mind”

One of my plans for the New Year was to take a break from participating in online activities and focus on my creative projects. But this changed when I read about the One Small Change project to help protect the planet.

The idea is to make one change each month leading up to Earth Day (April 22, 2010), and to blog about it. The challenge is hosted by Hip Mountain Mama.

I first heard about One Small Change from some of my blogging friends. At A Place Like This where Valarie will be using re-usable grocery bags instead of plastic bags, and at Mousy Brown’s House where the plan is to “find a source of locally produced (organic?) vegetables and use only these or those I have managed to harvest and preserve from our own garden”! How inspiring! Of course I had to join in!

So what will I do in January? What will my small change be? It’ll be switching to a new brand of climate smart, soft toilet paper made of 100% recycled fibers. Also switching to a new brand of locally produced and eco-friendly laundry detergent and washing-up liquid. And to remember to bring my re-usable cotton bags to the grocery store!

A New Year Begins

Colourful Stationery

A New Year begins with a blend of old and new. I decided to actually use some of the scrumptious stationery that I keep saving for a special day, a special project. Why not start the year by making 2010 special, I thought, and broke in my orange leather note and sketchbook with some sketches for fabric designs.

One of my Christmas presents was a new diary from Swedish Ordning & Reda, whose range of funky, colourful stationery make your eyes smile!

For daily use, I like the calligraphy pen and packs of gel ink pens from earth-friendly, minimalist and innovative Muji from Japan.

Origami To-Do Notes

The box of delightful origami paper has been salvaged from my collection of paper treasures and I’m using it for notes and to-do’s. It felt like a bold step, but I wasn’t prepared for just what a huge difference it makes to my days! It’s a simple technique. I write down one thing to do on the back of a piece of origami paper, and when the job’s done the origami paper goes on my notice board, creating a beautiful collage, and a rewarding, visual payoff. It’s so inspiring and tactile to handle and use these gorgeous origami papers daily, and in a casual way.

A Personalised Computer Desktop

Now that my desk has a little stack of purple and orange stationery to keep me inspired and on track, I cleaned up my disastrously messy computer desktop and populated my current projects with Luminous Purple and Orange Folder Icons. Then I weeded out my RSS feed, e-mail subscriptions and bookmarks to a minimum.

Now I feel happy and wildly virtuous, and I think I’ll put-off sorting out my e-mail and have lunch instead!

A box of origami paper.

Origami to-do notes.

One of the dragons from The Nine Dragons handscroll (九龙图／九龍圖), painted by the Song-Dynasty Chinese artist Chen Rong (陈容／陳容) in 1244 CE.

After trying, without success, to photograph birds this Saturday, I’ve still been thinking about them. Birds. And trees. Light and dark. So today I’ve been reading about mythical firebirds with brightly coloured plumage. The Phoenix lives a long life, and then is consumed by flames of its own making, only to rise again from the ashes. This lonely bird (there is only one Phoenix) is a universal symbol of the sun, mystical rebirth, resurrection and immortality and represents a cyclical process of life from death.

I discovered that the firebird is found in many cultures, the earliest found in the Egyptian Bennu (meaning “to rise brilliantly,” or “to shine”), the soul of the sun god Ra. The Persian sacred bird is called Huma or “the bird of paradise” or “bird of fortune” and looks similar to a heron. Compassionate Huma is said to have both the male and female natures in one body, each nature having one wing and one leg.

Death of a Phoenix, burning in the flames.

The Greeks and later the Romans called their firebird Phoenix, φοίνιξ, meaning the color purple-red or crimson and pictured the bird more like a peacock or an eagle. According to Greek legend, the Phoenix lived in Arabia close to a cool well. Every morning at dawn, it bathes in the water of the well and sings such a delightful and sweet song that Apollo (the god of light and the sun), would stop his chariot (the sun) to listen to the enchanting song.

Fenghuang is the Chinese correspondence to the phoenix, a chimera composited of many birds including the head of a golden pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, the tail of a peacock, the legs of a crane, the mouth of a parrot, and the wings of a swallow. Gentle and immortal Fenghuang brings good fortunes and the expression “Dragon and Phoenix” signifies wedded bliss. And then I started to read about Chinese dragons, with their long, serpentine bodies, a supernatural or spiritual symbol of heavenly power… And all this started with flocks of birds that refused to let themselves be photographed.

Detail of the painting The Nine Dragons, by Chen Rong (active c. 1235–1260), painted in 1244 during the Southern Song Dynasty. The painting was done with ink on paper. It is now located in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Walk with maple leaves

Yellow. If anyone asked me what my favourite colour is, I don’t think I’d say yellow. But here it is and every time I see pure yellow it washes over me like delight in the form of a colour. A miracle. And I ask myself, how can anything be so yellow?!

A rain of maple leaves

Maples trees turn vibrantly yellow, sometimes blushing lightly before turning a flaming scarlet red. These drifts of golden leaves remind me of treasure, childhood dreams of gold coins.

Below is a photo with yellow and gold leaves on dark soil, that inspires me to create patterns for textiles. The beauty of nature is an endless source of inspiration to me!

Yellow and gold leaves

A cloud of yellow! Startling! A marvel!

A cloud of yellow leaves

Autumn landscape by the lake

This time of year each day comes with subtle or startling changes and it makes me feel so present, my senses alert, my heart happy and grateful.

Yellow and orange leaves

Sometimes I wonder if I could express my impressions in the form of textile prints and tableware, but the whole industrial process seems pretty daunting!

Oak and pine tree

On my walks I’ve been listening to CraftSanity podcasts, a recommendation from New York artist Dana Barbieri who is working on a an inspiring Art Book project. I also joined a Facebook group “Faceless for six days”, the idea is to see how it feels to not use Facebook. So be warned, my Facebook footprint will be even tinier than usual!

Saturday’s The Experience Animation and Technology Exhibition 2009 where students of Hyper Island featured interactive and digital art powered by Wii technology turned out to be an exciting sensory overload! A few projects that made a deep impression were Soul Music (create music and light effects by dancing), The Jacksson Pollock Experience (make your own virtual “drip” technique paintings), The Triforce Installation (create ambient sounds and light animations) and the ingenious ThisPlay (hand held touch screen paper displays).

Orange leaves

Here’s another image with leaves that makes me think of transferring my impressions into pattern design.

Then again, I’m enjoying the ease of photography. The fast process is perfect for capturing ideas and makes such a contrast to the long and sometimes complicated process involved when I create with other techniques.

I hope you’re enjoying your weekend and that next week will glow exhilarating!

The Skandia Cinema, Stockholm, Sweden

Yesterday I watched Julie and Julia (here’s a link to the trailer) with my mum. It’s a delightful, witty and sensual film about passion, obsession and lots of butter!

New York blogger Julie Powell (Amy Adams) spends a year cooking and blogging her way through Julia Child’s (Meryl Streep) “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. This meant that Julie had 365 days to cook 524 recipes from the classic cookbook that introduced the French cuisine to America documenting the process in her blog The Julie/Julia Project.

What I adore about Julie and Julia is the joie de vivre, the zest for life, the passion that infuses Julia! I’m so fed up with artists in film and literature portrayed as tormented, miserable, paying a price, victims of their past or current times, that it was refreshing with the description of Julia Child’s creativity as a passion for life. A joy. Julia loves cooking, she loves her husband, she loves writing, she loves Paris and she loves life. First and foremost. Then she becomes famous. That’s delicious, sublime! As Julia would say: Bon appétit!

Melting butter