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Ideabook with Voices. Explorations in creativity.

Ten years ago, I discovered a gem of book.  It's called Sketchbook with Voices.  It was a collaboration of Eric Fischl and Jerry Saltz.  The premise was to ask a variety of artists "What's the best assignment you can give an art student?"  The result is a book that invites you to play with ideas right on the page and beyond.

Over the years, I have added to the book, creating my own assignments and inspirations for artists, writers and creative thinkers.  (SV is Fischl and Saltz's questions and CC are mine.) The questions are provocative, whimsical, non-linear, and some tap into emotional experiences as a source of ideas.

So, I invite you to fill your head with some of these voices and then listen to your own.  

Hold an object behind your back and recreate it drawing with your other hand.  SV

Do your own work but use someone else's clothes. SV

Make a work (drawing or painting) and then immediately create work that satirizes it.  SV

Paint faster than you can think.  SV

Read a passage from  T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and make a picture from it.  SV

Choose a spot and put an X on the ground.  For the next few weeks, take a photograph every day of only those things you can see while you are touching that X.  SV

Close your eyes and touch a person's face (yes, get permission first)  -- feel that face and without looking draw that face from tactile memory.  CC

Draw a piece of fruit on paper and then cut the drawing up and rearrange it on the page in any form you wish.  CC

Find an object to draw and imagine you are infatuated with it. Then, draw the same object as if it repels you. Then, do the same assignment with words.  CC

Take a package of clothes pins (any kind) and create three sculptures from it.  CC

Enjoy.

P.S. Please feel free to share your results by sending a JPEG to inotivity@gmail.com

 

Posted on Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 03:43PM by Registered CommenterCreativity Central | CommentsPost a Comment | References10 References

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