What If? - Where Creativity Comes From.

One of my favorite movies is ‘The Good Bad and the Ugly’. It’s the third installment of the trilogy. The music for this stellar movie is also a favorite. Ennio Morricone scores this film and pulls out ALL the stops. I listen to this and get overwhelmed and the chills rush though my soul. The superabundance of layered sounds, instruments, and voices that has been carefully choreographed by the mind of one individual strikes me as beyond creative. He is a classically trained musician and conductor. When director Sergio Leone asked Ennio to score the movie all he said was ‘it’s a dusty gritty move and lots is happening, so throw some grit in’. And grit he got. Marconi had the “what if“ factor dialed in. The “what if” factor in art can be a big player in your work if you let it. I know I have touched on this subject before, but I could do a whole hayloft full of the creativity subject, so here we go again...

What if? What if I added some of this, and what if I added some of that... and what about if I did this? These are so fun to think about. How do you get there though? And where does creativity come from? JRR Tolkien once wrote “One does not write such a story from the leaves of trees yet to be observed, nor by the means of botany and soil science; but it grows like a seed in the dark from the foliage of the mind: from all that has been seen or thought or read, long forgotten, down into the depths. Doubtless there is much to choose from, as with a gardener: what one throws on one’s personal compost heap.” Most of our creativity is buried deep inside and it is born from personal experience. You must surround yourself with loads of inspiration. Anything that tickles your brain. Anything and everything that fuels the heart. Everything that whispers softly to your soul. You should have hundreds upon hundreds of ideas - both cognitive and visual - swirling around in your brain bucket. Music, books, book covers, cd covers, wine labels, buildings, bridges, trees, clouds, paintings, bill boards, cars, barns, old movies, new movies, commercials, tv shows, old radio shows, podcasts, and anything Billy Connelly ever said. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of inspirations. Keep piling these up, stack upon stack and then when you're ready, like a giant Subway menu board, you begin to pick and choose all the things you’d like to make your art sandwich with. A bit from column A, a lot from column B, and two zings from column D.

The thing about doing things this way, is that you achieve the YOU factor. All of the stuff you like is what YOU like and not what anybody else’s decisions and choices are. And an added bonus - each time you choose from the menu board, the things you choose will be different. Each day brings something new. Depending on the day, your mood, the weather, the season, the books you’ve read, the workshops you’ve taken, the the stuff you just dumped on your pile that just became your new best most favoritist thing you love evahhhhh - Pick and choose and make an art sandwich.

Austin Kleon - Steal Like an Artist

“What if you just did it your own way? No rules, no right or wrong, just what you think is beautiful?” – Sandra Magsamen

A second way to creatively get you to YOU, is the Start At The Top And Work Down Method. A friend of mine who had painted for a while decided it was time to seek gallery representation. His plan was to start at the best known gallery and work down. The second gallery he approached said they would take him on. Good thing. If he had started at the bottom and the second gallery said yes, he would have been happy and would have been showing at the Big Bobs Art Emporium and Top Hat Rentals. Instead he was in an esteemed gallery for almost 20 years.

Lay on some over-the-top color and see where it gets you. It’s better to put on too much and pull back than it is to go from the bottom and up one level. You will rise one or two levels and think you have made it and then you stop. Go the other way and you will get to an even higher spot. Work down and slowly back off and you’ll have a stronger result. This method is not for the faint of heart. You need to put your big boy panties on and go for it!

Ask ‘what if’ all the time! How much can the painting bear? Paint till it breaks, then back off one step. Let your inner voice tell you what it thinks it can handle then go even bigger. A little shot of potato water never hurt either.

I give you now 2.56 minutes of my favorite movie with the theme playing, and then the full 6-minute song performed by the Danish Orchestra, with all the bells and whistles, note for note. Stay at least until the 3:50 mark as it gets even better! All this from one mind that wasn’t afraid to say ‘what if?’. I wonder if he ever slept at night?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly • Main Theme • Ennio Morricone

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - The Danish National Symphony Orchestra (Live)

What kind of madness could put in YOUR work?

Your friend in art,

Doug,

PS. “We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is we do not get them from our laptops" – John Cleese.