- Creative environments foster creativity. Agreed, but with exceptions. I have friends in the United States that are prime examples of this - children born to art gallery owners and musicians who turned out to go to art school or to play fantastic music throughout high school and into university. One of these friends, however, is an exception to the rule. Eric (personal flickr) is not only a MENSA-quality walking brain (speaks German and Chinese, plus some Russian, Afrikaans, French & Japanese and is one of the people I go to when I need math help), but incredibly creative (plays piano, cello & viola, takes travel pictures and does creative writing as well as travel blogging). Neither of his parents were artists, but they were both well-traveled and incredibly supportive of his endeavors. On the other hand, my mother holds a B.A. in photography, so I grew up with cameras and pictures around me all the time. It also explains a lot of the reason why I'm interested in photography and have taken it to the next level and started learning graphic design & photoshop by myself.
- Daily Shoot provided a way to work outside the box & improved my photography. Disagreed. Daily Shoot, to me was incredibly constraining. Almost every day I received a new, specific assignment that, to me, left little wiggle room (i.e. the construction one, specific color ideas). Maybe it's just because I don't take demands to be creative in one way very well or maybe it's just shooting on days when I really don't feel creative that I disliked Daily Shoot. For some, I imagine it may have sparked ideas or trains of thought, but to me it just didn't do it.
- You're creative when you're hungry. 50/50. My mind is about as one-track as a pachinko parlor is quiet between the hours of 9 and 22:00. Meaning it's not. I think CONSTANTLY (and don't sleep a lot of nights because of it) and will pop out with ideas, some more feasible than others, at any point. Some of these times I'm hungry, some of these times I'm jacked up on caffeine, some of these times I've actually had something to eat and am satisfied. Hunger is a bit irrelevant to my creativity.
Now that I've listed off my thoughts, I feel that we all have the capability to be artists. There's all kinds of arts out there (from business to the "art of being") that anyone can get involved in! Think of problems or challenges that you face in everyday life and figure out ways to make them less problematic or overcome them entirely!
There are also SO MANY tools and resources available to the public for free (well, technically free, provided you pay for your internet, etc...)! Things like aviary, dafont and brusheezy provide the program, font and brushes you need (FOR FREE!) to play around and make some really awesome art on your computer. And, like Timmmmyboy mentioned Abduzeedo provides A-MA-ZING tutorials for Photoshop and other Adobe programs such as Illustrator and Fireworks (I have been using their tutorials for ages and there are some that are just STUNNING!). Furthermore, there are other tutorial and resource blogs out there that can be accessed with a simple search on google! Thanks to the internet, art has become a worldwide capability.
In short, as Stephen Colbert would say, I am an artist and so can you!
There are also SO MANY tools and resources available to the public for free (well, technically free, provided you pay for your internet, etc...)! Things like aviary, dafont and brusheezy provide the program, font and brushes you need (FOR FREE!) to play around and make some really awesome art on your computer. And, like Timmmmyboy mentioned Abduzeedo provides A-MA-ZING tutorials for Photoshop and other Adobe programs such as Illustrator and Fireworks (I have been using their tutorials for ages and there are some that are just STUNNING!). Furthermore, there are other tutorial and resource blogs out there that can be accessed with a simple search on google! Thanks to the internet, art has become a worldwide capability.
In short, as Stephen Colbert would say, I am an artist and so can you!
I would agree with your conclusion, and the point about the guy who's creative and yet did not grow up in a creative environment got me thinking as to why we actually consider "art" to be so distinct from anything else. It's like saying that anyone can speak a language, or walk on two feet and youread that and go, "D'oh of course" but I think why we treat art (i.e. being creative) as anything different is because we have pigeon-holed the term to mean something that only an exclusive list of people are a part of (galleries, painters, museums et al), when it's not like that at all
ReplyDeleteLiving is an art, in my opinion! It takes lots of skills (especially creativity in problem solving - even when it's just walking around one of those stupid street construction sites!) to survive day-to-day. But lots of people have narrowed down "art" to mean "fine art" and I think that's just silly!
ReplyDeleteI have to agree about the opposites of growing up in an art-related family. My father was a painter and played guitar, the drums, and a bit of piano. While I always wanted to be an artist as a child, I couldn't paint worth crap and I didn't pursue that field like I thought I would. I do think that environment matters when it comes to what you think you can or can't do. If your parents don't let you do something as a child, the chances are you'll rebel and it'll come out as an adolescent anyway. So, I think everyone is an artist in some way, it just depends on what your method of relaying your art is and when you finally start to create that art. Regardless of if your parents try to restrict you or don't restrict you at all, I think some form of art will come oozing out one day.
ReplyDeleteMm it could probably go either way though. If you take it like that I kinda see it as up to how the individual wants to respond to a certain set of stimuli, which could be totally art-related, or totally not
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