Inventing ideas: Numbers into Portraits

You can just draw with simple ideas. In this case I put numbers and equations randomly on a page. Then by extending some of the lines, and by adding stuff, I’m drawing until an image is suggested.

This kind of play is vital and helps your creativity. This solves the problem of wanting to draw but having no subject. Sometimes you have a strong desire to draw but the subject evades you. Or the subject is disconnected somehow. This also allows you to channel some love into line, line for its own sake, or color; the love of the elements themselves. I love a really good line, I enjoy carving the line into the paper. This is a way in, so you are not stopped by not having a subject. Maybe the subject is drawing.

What is stopping you? Find a detour around it.

Where do my ideas come from?

People often wander in during First Friday (before covid) and ask where do my ideas come from? It’s easier to point out specific connections when people come in. Most of my ideas come from looking at art, from my own work, from observations of nature. In this one below, this started as a large non-objective ink drawing, just random marks (although one could argue this point) in india ink on a large page. Then I would crop and review the page, looking for any areas that seem to suggest something larger-like a bit of landscape. Two points to consider here- this process takes practice. And what I would see in a bunch of shapes and lines is likely not what you would see. In many ways this process relies on my experience as a artist, my training and perception. This manner is much like psychic automatism, a Surrealist method for creating imagery not based on observation, but seen by the artist in something else, like when you see animals in cloud formations.