Creative Inspiration from Reading

in ,

One thing I’ve been muling over recently is the delight in reading books and the serendipitous ideas which emerge. Yes, it’s a well known thing that to learn, one often reads (and talks, debates and thinks).

What I’ve been enjoying recently is the fun of seeing what creative ideas I get when reading. It’s been happening so frequently that I’m almost making a game out of it for myself. Some of the books are art and creativity related so getting ideas from there is not such a surprise. I’ve started inking out words from the pages of a book to see if I can create interesting random sentences. Austin Kleon, author of books, Steal Like an Artist and Keep Going, does this with newspapers. I’m using an old copy of Pride and Prejudice to see what I can find. So far I find it’s hard!

I’ve been reading A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor. Much of the book is rather dry and my mind drifts off when I’m reading it (I’ve been told the BBC podcast of it is really, really good however). Many of the objects don’t inspire me much, but every now and then, there is a piece that I want to and have drawn.

Novels are also a great place for art ideas to come from. Yesterday, in one of my sketchbooks, I was working on an animal from a list I made from animals mentioned in Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I thought I knew a lot about animals before I started reading the book, but I encountered species after species that I didn’t know much about or what they looked like. I decided that drawing them would be a good exercise. I certainly didn’t start the book with an idea that I was going to be drawing from it (in both senses!)

 
Start of an ink drawing of a bison in my sketchbook (photo on wikipedia by Jack Dykinga)

Start of an ink drawing of a bison in my sketchbook (photo on wikipedia by Jack Dykinga)

 

Three books together are making me think of starting a workshop/group to go through one of the books together, Making Art a Practice by Cat Bennett. The other two books which are adding to the conversation are The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker and Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. Raising awareness of systemic inequality is not the issue for creating this workshop, but the organization of the book with journaling from prompts, and then talking about exploring together through a shared circle can be used in the format of the class. I love how things related and interconnect so often.

And the list of inspiration goes on…

What books have you been inspired to create from?

Start of Inktober 2019 Drawings

I love the idea of Inktober - 31 days of drawings done with ink. Using watercolor or colored pencil is allowed but the idea is to do mostly with ink. I never seem to get my way all through the month drawing every day, but I try. There is an official list of prompts below.

Official 2019 Inktober Prompts

Official 2019 Inktober Prompts

For my Inktober challenge, however, I came up with the first 31 or so animals mentioned in the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel. All of those were acquired by page 14 in the book. There are lots more animals mentioned!

I may or may not get to completing this challenge but I have done the first 10 days. A drawing technique that I like to use when approaching a new subject is to do a blind contour drawing of the picture. This means that while I have my pen on the page, I only look at what I want to draw and don’t look at the page. Blind contours are great for getting practice seeing. Drawing is all about drawing what you see and not what you think you see.

Here are my first few inktober drawings with their blind contour drawings next to them. It’s kind of fun to compare the blind one with the later sketch. Sometimes they match really well, sometimes I’m channelling my inner Picasso!

#inktober #inktober2019 #lifeofpianimals #penandink