The Creative Process
Hello!
This is both an exciting and terrifying step for us! Well, really, butterflies, sweaty palms and not sleeping through the night could be attributed to either - so let’s go with excitement!
An artist (somehow that still doesn’t roll off the tongue, or fingers, with ease) goes through several steps before bringing their art out into the light of day. That overall “Creative Process” has been broken down into 4 (and other places, into more) stages:
- Preparation
- Incubation
- Illumination
- Verification ( Implementation)
But what does that all mean?
You spend time learning a skill/your craft: you learn how to use a camera/brush/digital pen; you learn how to shoot/paint/draw; you understand the complexities of colour and light; you develop your editing process; you discover what paper and types of paint and brushes/method of printings feel right. This part is usually pretty mundane and unexciting. It can feel like work as you prepare to make art.
Then comes the hard to describe, almost mythical process, of being creative: the ideas coming and going through our unconscious and subconscious as we go about our daily lives doing laundry, walking in the park, running errands. The incubation phase is in motion.
Eureka! Aha! Alleluia! I can see the light! Illumination is now at play. The fun stuff. The drive to create appears whether you’re ready or not, in the shower, in the middle of watching “Is it Cake?” or at 3 a.m. (alleged sleep time for most!!) and you HAVE to create, in whatever medium the muse is beckoning you towards.
This last part is tricky; and it's easy to see why some have expanded this process to include more than 4 phases. Verification is getting your art out into the world and letting others experience it. Some artists enjoy creating art just for themselves; some (many in fairness) let self-doubts prevent them from sharing it at all; others, like us, are excited to see it provoke emotions, inspire thoughts and ideas, spark conversations and maybe even action.
So thank you for joining us here. We hope you’ll be curious and have a look around.
We’re off to have some tea and see what else is brewing in our noggins!
Andy & Claire