13 - celebrate pegs

Take time to notice the simple and ordinary. Wander around your house or street with a cheap camera. Don't bother about taking clear or precise shots, just notice what's all around you in the raw. The blander the better, a sock drawer or a peg on a washing line.

As you get drawn into the minutiae of it, you'll begin to notice it's actually quite intriguing.

I've become unaccountably enchanted by pegs and buttons.

“The greatest discoveries have come from people who have looked at a standard situation and seen it differently.”

 Ira Erwin

12 - investigate aversion

For me music has an instant way of bringing underlying aversions to the fore - maudlin music, for instance takes my mood down to a place I instinctively and fervently try to avoid. 

A friend suggested I try doodling whilst listening to the very music I'd normally avoid, using it as a kind of soundtrack or prompter for the pencil. 

The result was fascinating and what's more, when my chattering mind stopped complaining and busied itself elsewhere, I found the emotions it brought out were a lot less bothersome than I'd first imagined and made the doodle a kind of visual representation of my emotions... quite a cathartic thing!

Unexpectedly, I also developed an unaccountable fondness for brass bands!

“The senses have been conditioned by attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant: a man should not be ruled by them; they are obstacles in his path.”

Bhagavad Gita (Composed between the 5th and the 2nd century BC)

11 - a special place

Set aside a special place, even if it's a tiny area of the house. Two of my most inspiring places are in fact my under stairs cupboard in the winter and my garden shed in the summer. Both places close off distractions and help me single pointedly focus. I suspect a big cardboard box would do pretty well!

10 - jumbled words

Takes a finished draft of something you've written or something existing in an old book and cut it up with scissors. The cutting can be of paragraph, sentence, phrase, or word by word, or a combination of all of these. 

After cutting up the writing, stick the pieces back together, experimenting with different ways of organising the paper until you feel most happy with it. (Magnetic words are good to use too if you have them).

Making serious sentences into silly, witty, whimsical or Nonsensical verse is very freeing and is very good if you're feeling uninspired.

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”

 A. A. Milne (English Humorist, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, 1882-1956)

9 - question function

It's an interesting question - how we define objects by their function? 

We’ve given them all these different names but what if somehow, one day we forgot what they were called, would we start to look past their limitations?

If on the other hand we start to recognize that what we see and understand is simply one view of what is, we have the start of an awakening and an expanding of our view of the world. 

Have a good throw out of any clutter, it'll clear your mind and you'll find all sorts of funny little doodahs you don't want to throw away. Well keep hold of the bit's that intrigue you and put them in a little box. then think about recycling them into something completely different!

I became quite attracted to the colour and textures of carrier bags and decided to heat fuse them into a rather natty bracelet and a poor man's stained glass window!

I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes. 

Augusten Xon Burroughs (writer - New York Times bestselling memoir Running with Scissors (2002)

8 - get lost in a zentangle

Zentangles are a way of creating images from repetitive patterns, a process of doodling that brings about a meditative state. This is the meditative state in drawing that is needed to tap into your best creative energies. It increases creative freedom and creates a shift in focus and perspective. Because you have no idea what its result will be when you begin it's not restricted by your expectations and can be quite profound creative meditation.
To relax and intentionally direct your attention while creating something quite beautiful is an uplifting experience. I find it an excellent starting point for any creative undertaking.

"Any mind activity is much more likely to be beneficial and to be creative if it's preceded by presence and stillness."

Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power of Now)

“In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil.”

Patanjali (150 BCE - compiler of the Yoga Sutras)

7 - the unobvious

It's easy to get enthused about a sunset, or a white sandy beach but if you look a little closer and open your mind, you'll see beauty all around you. It's in the detail of a frosty crisp packet or the sun glinting on a crushed tin can by the roadside. 

"Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed". 

Lebanese artist & poet (1883 – 1931)  

6 - new eyes

View something with new eyes. Take something you wouldn't normally be attracted to. stop and just look at it for a while, but without the internal dialogue... you may develop a new fascination and even learn to love something that once repelled you!

“There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.”

Denis Diderot (French man of letters and philosopher, 1713-1784)

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see. 

Leonardo da Vinci 

5 - blind contour drawing

If you think about what you're drawing too much, your logical left brain chips in and tells you what the subject "should" look like and the result is fairly uninteresting. 

Blind contour drawing is a method to fool that left brain and hence avoid this. It was popularized by kimon nicolaïdes in his book the natural way to draw (1941). 

Fix your eyes on the outline of the model or object, draws the contour very slowly in a steady, continuous line without lifting the pencil or looking at the paper. 

Look at the paper to place an internal feature, but once you begin to draw, don't glance down, let yourself go, find a stillness and concentration in just looking and following.

The result is what your right brain sees... and it's all quite charming and endearing.

"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness".

Eckhart Tolle - (German born spiritual teacher and author of ‘The Power of Now’)

4 - your favourite film

It seems like an obvious suggestion, but you can always say no to a trip to tesco's, put your slippers on, close the curtains and watch your favourite old film?... the world won't come to an end if you go shopping tomorrow!

Take a look at what is it that makes it your favourite film, there's probably something quite profound going on. perhaps something about it moves that right brain on a fundamental level.

"Today's a day of big decisions - going to start writing me novel - 2000 words every day... I'm going to start getting up in the morning". 

(Tom Courtney in Billy Liar 1963)

3 - sand sculpture

Why on earth do we often let kids have all the fun. Something about the seaside sets you free, so take advantage of the feeling and build yourself a fantasy... and if you don't live by the sea, take yourself off to a wood and build something with sticks or stones!

“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”

 Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

2 - mess it up

Do something for the hell of it, pretend your 6 for a few hours... what would you do?

Um well, maybe not! 

Perhaps a doodle is a good start. you probably did this naturally as a teenager, so have a go now, take a serious looking photo or illustration and mess it up with a colourful doodle!... there, that's created something much more interesting!

"In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play."

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

German philosopher & postmodernist (1844 – 1900) 

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better. 

- Brian Eno

 English musician, composer, record producer, music theorist  (born 15 May 1948)

1 - mind map

Pick a word, idea, or theme and take yourself on a journey of new avenues.

I took the word “purpose” and freely allowed words to come rather than editing them. You may come up with an entirely different set of connections and that is the point of mind mapping.

Have a go... don't stop at words, add any images that come to mind too?

"Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instictive thinking."

Malcolm Gladwell  - (Author of ‘The Tipping Point)’