Welcome to: Artist Diary: Part 5/5 , this day five of a 5 day project where we discover 5 ways to fill a blank spread in 10 minutes.
This project is the second of 3 projects of “Start a daily drawing habit: a Gameplan”, go here for the full table of contents.
IMPORTANT:
This is the last assignment for the Artist Diary project. I encourage you to pick one of these methods as your default go to method and spend 10 minutes a day, filling a spread in your diary, over time this will evolve into something completly unique… don’t rush to get there, let it happen organically, in the chat some people have shared their unique practices.
My aim here is to get you started or started again. Your job is to pick something that gets you excited to do daily, see it as a pleasure not a chore.
With that all out of the way,
Shall we go?… Let’s go!
Welcome to day 5:
Start with an image
Tony Buzan famously emphasized starting a mind map in the centre of a blank, horizontal page, stating that this gives your brain …
“freedom to spread out in all directions and to express itself more freely and naturally”
In his mind mapping technique, he teaches us to explore our mind on the page by creating a map. Using his techniques I once went from 4th last in class, to 4th, securing a place in one of the ‘good’ classes in high school.
We’re often told to use our brains, but not often told how. Mind mapping, and specifically starting with an image, is one way to do that.
Interestingly Lynda Barry also teaches us to start with an image. And she calls an image a place.
In one of her exercises she asks us to imagine a specific car. This provides the center of the image. She asks us to put ourselves in the image. and write from that perspective (you can also draw but writing is faster).
Where are you she asks? Inside or outside, behind or in front, what’s to your left, right, above, below. What’s behind you and ahead of you.
Where Tony Buzan introduced a map. Lynda Barry brings you on a guided tour, to the place where images are. And she teaches you how to go there.
These two methods are ways to use our brains, our whole brain, that requires all that logic and reasoning, but also requires, imagination.