Vision board

One of the exercises for the Touchstone online Art course I'm doing at the moment, is a vision board. The gist is to use magazines to cut-out, whatever images and words inspire you. If you don't have magazines, then you can do an online version, using Pinterest.

I got a little stuck on this exercise, because it brought back memories of an art assignment in high school. It turned into an innocent misunderstanding with the teacher, which led to a public "dressing down", in front of my peers. So every time I thought of doing this vision board, I reached a blank!

The thing is however, I REALLY wanted to do it, because having a vision board for inspiration, would be great! So I tweaked the exercise a little, to fit in with how I could do it.

It took several hours to complete, from the depths of my imagination. It contains all the things I want to be inspired by. There's also somewhat of a cycle to it as well. I love cycles.

Basically, ideas start as seeds, then germinate. They can make us feel vulnerable and unsure at first, because they're new. It requires a little (or a lot) of grace to be inspired and make the connections, in order for the idea to bloom. Those ideas, return to the world, and we do what we can, to maintain the balance of ourselves through this cycle. She is naked because all she has is her creativity and perception.

I felt so much lighter after doing this exercise, because I climbed over a psychological barrier and was able to move to the next step. Which is basically what the entire course is about. It's making those steps we constantly tell ourselves, we're not entitled to take for some reason or another.

I would like to share some links I've obtained, via this course. They're publicly available links, which I think are worth sharing. The first is a free downloadable book, called, "The War of Art", and is written by Stephen Pressfield. I'm only up to page 50, but it has some interesting views on how we view our creativity - or, the desire to create.

The second link is from a TED talk by Tim Urban, dubbed the Master Procrastinator. It's a very easy to follow talk, which explains the dilemma of the procrastinator. It doesn't hurt that it's very amusing too.

I'm on week three at the moment, with one more week of the course to go!