Breaking out of Routine Thinking with Creativity
Using art to add new perspective to life and the status quo
Challenging the paradigm
I have always been passionate about thinking differently about the “norm” and societal expectations. It is one of the main things that attracted me to a career in technology — the ability to build something that could change the world and open up new paths for diverse people. It is also one reason I pursued an entrepreneurial path and joined a start-up.
However, consistently thinking out-of-the-box can be difficult. Everyone has a routine, whether that is hanging out with the same group of friends, or one imposed at work for the sake of productivity. This can have a negative impact on our ability to solve complex problems, or even on the way we think about issues.
Exercising the innate creativity that we all have can mitigate these harmful effects, and bring us to a more fulfilling sense of self. In this article, I share my approach to a recent piece of art, but creativity can manifest in anything: software, mathematics, writing, music, games, etc.
Inspiration
The hardest part for me is always getting started, often because finding inspiration is difficult. In fact, I scour so many different ideas, books, and photos, only to end in frustration and never even pick up a pencil.
Oftentimes though, it is my own mental blocker preventing me from even taking step one — the frustration of the workday, fatigue from not sleeping well, or any number of reasons.
On top of that, the funniest part is that inspiration is usually in the smallest things or moments of realization. In this case, I was reading about the latest major research in climate change and the loss of jaguar habitats. Jaguars have always been one of my favorite animals since childhood, and reading about them reminded me of this fact. Thinking back to your core passions, or being reminded of them, definitely helps in this process. I find it too easy to forget about them in my day-to-day, buried under years of to-do lists, e-mails, and the constant pressure of other people projecting their own priorities and needs.
When I do finally find inspiration like this, I always laugh at myself because getting started is as easy as picking up a pencil. And the answer is usually within us from the beginning.
Once I have some concept of what I want to do, I start to look at photos or other materials online. I surveyed many Pinterest boards, National Geographic magazines, and photos of jaguars like the below:
I typically select three to four reference photos and use them for guidance on anatomy, key features, or other things that I want to incorporate into the final piece.
Then, I consider the approach. What medium do I want to use? What will I do differently from either my previous works or other artists? Do I want to draw a background as well (in which case more research is needed)? Should it be realistic?
When I thought about what medium to use, I wanted to keep the materials as minimal as possible and with things I already had. And I wanted to do something I hadn’t really tried before.
And what could be more simple than black and white? But there is little unique about another black and white drawing, and so, eyeing the lone white colored pencil, I thought, “what about starting with a black canvas and only bringing out the white?”
With this in mind, I started practice sketches on regular drawing paper to get the pose and form down that I wanted.
The rest is history
After a lot of mistakes and drawing on and off in spurts of inspiration (over a long period of time, grabbing an hour here and there), I completed the piece.
I ended up donating it to a local conservation nonprofit, but here is the final result:
It was a lot of fun trying this new method of only using a white pencil on black canvas. I felt challenged to think about pencil art in a completely different light, flipping the paradigm and drawing in reverse (black canvas, white pencil). This approach is very unforgiving — erasing is a lot easier on white paper! — but I learned a lot.
And that, on its own, is worth the entire effort.
