Imagine if God had said: "I can't even draw a stick figure." Neither you or this beautiful world around you would exist. You are the direct offspring of creator! Imagine if all your creative neurons were firing on all cylinders and you were able to apply your creativity to every aspect of your life! I promise you your life would suddenly become a lot more interesting.
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Detail from the Abandoned Mounds Triptych
Your creative mind can conjure ways out of any difficult maze. Your creative self can stop negative thoughts in their tracks, back up and peel out into a landscape of freedom from fear and anxiety. Your thoughts can heal you and make a gloomy day infused now with the sunshine of creative thoughts that turn to action.
I am sure there are many ways to reignite creativity but the surefire way to jumpstart those limp neurons is to create art. I am not just talking about throwing up a canvas and randomly splashing paint at it in the hopes that it will look good and everyone will think you are now a creative genius. I'm talking about studying art in its simplicity in order to propel you forward into the true realm of creativity that can be applied to your life and bring an all around positive change to everything you do.
Art teaches us to think critically in a very natural way because the laws of the universe are in play. Nature is made up of ecosystems and if one element of this delicate balance is destroyed the entire ecosystem collapses.
Let us start with evolution and adaptation in plants, it starts with a seed that grows and slowly develops into its final presentation to the world, from a Peony to a Baobab tree, all must start somewhere in order to reveal the essence of that seed within. Just as we pick up a pencil and begin to draw, we are slowly revealing the unique creative lines that come from within the fabric of our very soul.
Start by doodling and observe the patterns that reveal themselves in the lines that you draw. You will see the seeds of your unique originality appear. You have not copied anything or drawn inspiration from any exterior element that has influenced you. The lines you are drawing represent your true spirit exiting from within, however simple they may be.
Now you must learn to draw correctly. GULP! This is not a talent thing, it can be easily learned. The reason you must study all ten critical components of art is so that you can DEVIATE from them and hold your own when the jurors come sniffing around with their personal opinions of whether your art is "good" or not! You can stand in your big sovereign art boots and describe your art confidently. You are a true student of art, having taken the time to study the basics.
The basics are: Drawing, anatomy, perspective, care of art tools, brushes, color, composition, light and shadow, inspiration methods and finally, facing a blank canvas. (My book SPLAT! teaches you all these simple steps.)
Returning now to the seed analogy. The genes in the Artist seed must comprise each element of the basics of art to flourish. The surprise gene is always your unique ability of expression when your seed of creativity flowers.
After you have studied the proportions of the human body which is a lot simpler than you think, you can then cheerfully deviate from "the rules" in order to enhance the expression of the humans you wish to convey.
An overview of studying the dynamics of perspective infuses a natural understanding of perspective into your art as you create. Once you have studied the basics of perspective you can never unlearn it. Perspective naturally adds a dynamic to your art that was never there before and by adding multiple perspectives to a flat plane, a level of drama appears that makes people look twice.
The composition gene in the art seed teaches us to create balance and harmony on a canvas or purposeful erraticism if we so desire. And so it goes on through all ten basic steps of growth, applying and deviating in order to coax your original creativity out from within.
Now why go to all this trouble just to fire up a few creative neurons you might ask? The world around us is changing fast and we must be ready! It may not look like it now but we are in the last throes of a failing, unsustainable and destructive way of being in the world. The powers that be/were are trying to determine for us the way forward out of this mess but ultimately it will be up to us. Humanity must move away from being fed from without and begin creating from within, in order to heal our world ourselves. There is much talk of the robotization of humans which requires the introduction of biopolymers and nano-tech substances into the human body linking us to a two way central information source through electromagnetic means to the point where our creativity can be circumvented at a soul level. In order to circumvent this futuristic coming horror show humans must covet their creativity like there is no tomorrow because there will be no tomorrow for humanity as we know it if these plans for humanity are allowed to go forward on a worldwide scale!
It's a simple fix! If you take the time that you usually use each day to zone out and utilize that time toward creativity you will begin to see the positive changes this makes to your everyday life. Just devoting a half hour a day to studying the basics of art will begin to rouse those creative neurons, spark your imagination seeds into growth and lift you out of a mundane mindset into the realm of possibilities. The purpose of this daily exercise is not to become a famous artist but to enhance your existence overall. From cooking to gardening and beyond, everything you do can now hold the artistic skills you have learned from the critical thinking you have been applying to your art. Our ability to think critically is intrinsically linked to our survival as a species, are you beginning to see why art is so important now?
Creating art enhances observation, perception and intuition during the process of creating- by default! You start by noticing the obvious improvements you can make to your art and progress from there. Too much red in the top right corner of the canvas leads the viewer's eye off the cliff edge of the painting just as too much heat can burn the food you are cooking. Planting vegetables near a Black Walnut tree will not yield a good crop as the soil is depleted by the toxins from the tree. You suddenly "SEE" the tree, you feel its presence in relation to the vegetable patch. Instead of seeing a blur of clustered houses you are now seeing how the light falls upon the houses and the shapes and colors that stand out, the examples are endless.
As humanity moves away from service to self toward service to others, learning to solve visually aesthetic problems can morph into the ability to solve the problems of our world around us. When we step outside our doorstep and see homeless people lying all about the street we will be more apt to look toward a solution rather than choose not to see the problem. In other words art has literally taught us to see the bigger picture! In a world where children are force fed from a virtual cyber intravenous drip we can begin to see how creatively malnourished each generation successively becomes. The overall move away from the organic in favor of the synthetic is not boding well for humanity's future.
Anyone who has become "lost in time" while creating connects to source and the wisdom of the cosmos as their mind naturally opens as they create. I hope I have given you enough reasons to begin studying the basics of art and the life-enhancing benefits it will yield for you. Please consider getting my book SPLAT! to start you off on your journey, for this is why I wrote it! You can purchase it here.
Jane Evershed has been painting in oils for over forty years. Her first endeavor out of high school was to teach children’s art classes. She has taught art in South Africa, the USA and Indonesia. She believes that art being an outstanding feature of highly evolved civilizations warrants as many people as possible to learn and teach creativity toward the higher purpose of humanity’s positive evolution. She teaches art with a focus and goal of creating from soul. Internal creativity in children must be nurtured from a young age as it is being threatened by too much external techno-interference.
About Jane Evershed
Jane began painting and distributing reproductions and originals of her work nationally in the United States for twenty five years with great success.
After being invited by Michael Tellinger to Ubuntu headquarters in South Africa to create huge murals depicting the ancient sites of Adam’s Calendar coupled with trips to Bali to absorb the wisdom of the NewEarth presenters at two World Health Summits Jane focused on the dire state of art in the world today and remedies for art health. The summits in Bali hosted by Sacha Stone, founder of NewEarthorizon inspired her to create SPLAT! which teaches the art basics in ten steps. Jane now sits on the NewEarth University* faculty of the Living Arts. *NEU synergizes ancient wisdom with full-spectrum breakthrough technologies and innovations from leading experts in their field – visionaries and pioneers sharing an array of talent and gifts, so that together we manifest a peaceful New Earth.
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