Thursday, April 1, 2010

Blog Carnival: The Creative Process: How do you plan and organize for design?


So EtsyMetal's Blog Carnival this month is: The Creative Process: How do you plan and organize for design? and we're supposed to take a photo of our workbench. Which is pretty funny. I promise I did not clean it up at all (uh, of course I didn't, drawers open, tools ALL over the place) - I'm wondering how many of us will??

As far as answering the question - thats an easy one - I don't plan or organize!

Well, that isn't entirely true, but the vast majority of the time I don't. I'm much more of a process oriented creator. When I'm working on new designs, its very much material based in terms of deciding what direction to go in. My themes are all kind of connected - in my head anyway. Mostly nature and plant based - though I go through periods of liking bugs and being inspired by them. I really like earth sciences, rocks, trees, oceans, bugs, animals, etc. If I am interested in doing something new, I think about all these things and what I'm most interested in on that day.

If I have a stone I want to work with, I look at it, and see what it reminds me of and then base the design and texture off of something in the natural world that goes with that stone.

If I'm working in wax, I just like to play with it and see what it reminds me of and then build off of that.

If I'm working with metal, pretty much the same thing. I like to "see" what might want to appear.

The idea of a sketchbook is nice, but I hardly ever keep one. There IS a new project I have rolling around in my head that I think I might need to use a sketchbook as it is a bit more complicated than I usually work. It involves non-existent insects, or hybrid bugs. Even if I do a sketch though, I know the final product won't look quite like the sketch, so that is why I rarely do them!

Most of my creative process is looking and thinking and then doing.

Checkout the other participants from this month's carnival!

Victoria Takahashi/Experimetal

Thomasin Durgin/metalriot
Su Trindle/QuercusSilver
Inbar Bareket
Stacey Hansen
Nina Gibson
Danielle Miller
Corliss & John Rose/2Roses
Maria Whetman

5 comments:

Quercus Silver said...

Loved reading about your process. and peeking at your bench.

Fluxplay Jewellery. said...

Interesting how half of us use sketchbooks while the other half don't, just goes to show the different ways in which ideas can develop. I might have to steal your brilliant idea of hanging hammers along the underside of the bench!

Beth Cyr said...

the whole sketchbook thing is really interesting to me too! and yes, hanging the hammers on any open space is fantastic! i actually hang them back up most of the time, unlike putting my other tools back. having them "out" is easy access - you can't see it on the photo, but a little to the right is my anvil and stump and i have a couple more hanging on that and on the far leg of the work bench is another!

Anonymous said...

I so enjoy seeing others work benches. Mine is way too chaotic and I continually try to keep it clear.

I have to use a sketchbook, or at least I think I do. I really enjoy finding out how other artists create. Thanks for sharing!
Kathleen

Thomasin Durgin said...

Interesting how divergent we are in our working methods. I am loving that box for your flex shaft mandrels!