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…or how I wish I learned to stop worrying and just draw already!

I suppose since this is a guest post I should say hi before I delve in… Hi!

What? OK, a bit more of an introduction then, my name is Adam Howie, although I often go by the nickname Kimded online, and I am, for better or worse, an artist. John has been kind enough to give me some space on his blog to blether about my art and my inspiration/motivation behind it. In many ways this is not a “how to be inspired” or “how to be creative” post, there are way better courses, blogs, and the like out there for that, this is just a guy trying to explain what goes on in his head. Hopefully this will be at the very least interesting, and perhaps helpful to some. This of course means that I’ve been trying to figure out how best to do write this, and since I am a preacher’s son, it shall be a three point blog post.

But before I begin… well it’s a bit late for that but anyway, probably good to set out what I think about being creative and its place in our lives. I firmly believe that humanity is a creative species; we have an innate drive to create and appreciate created things. This desire takes many forms, painting, music, architecture, engineering, science, relationships, and so much more.  An odd list to be sure but in each of these there is found, when it is at its highest zenith, creativity, and creation. So I see art as only being a part of the larger act of creativity we can do, but it’s the one I shall be focusing on here. So yeah, a brief exploration of creative inspiration and me…

Finding Me… I mean, Inspiration

So, where do I find inspiration? Well the short answer is that, for me, inspiration is everywhere. Some of my art work is inspired by scripture verses, songs, lyrics, scientific theories, and quotes. A lot of it comes from various places and stews and simmers in my mind and then one thing with suddenly cause the various thoughts and ideas to coalesce into a distinct idea.

For me there is also a kind of tangential inspiration, those things that fuel these creative nexuses but not directly. Mainly this comes from looking at other people’s artworks and allowing their style, their use of colour, technique, and even what they have used to represent the ideas they are trying to convey to influence me and create new links in my mind. Also music is a great fuel for the creative fires for me; I almost always have music on when I am painting. I suppose in some ways it’s a noise that keeps my brain from running off to wildly or jumping around too much, as it has want to do. Even writing this I find myself jumping between writing, surfing, tweeting, and other things… just the way what counts as my mind works I guess.

I have been going to various art courses since deciding (perhaps foolishly) to try and make a living being an artist, these courses have been great for fuelling the background to inspiration as well as giving ideas for jump starting the creative process. One thing that I have found key is always having a pen or pencil and a sketchbook with me. If I get an idea almost no matter when or where (within reason of course) I try and do a quick sketch or even just jot down some notes. Of course I still need to do this more and develop the habit of sketching things I see for reference of later inspiration.

Click here for Part 2

Please excuse another Radiohead post (this will be the last one for a while), but I decided to listen to all their studio albums today in chronological order – plus a live album and a solo album by Thom Yorke. I was inspired to max-out on Radiohead following the release of their latest album yesterday and because I was going nowhere on a wet Saturday! I listened while doing bits and pieces round the house.

Their music is an acquired taste, but like all acquired tastes, well worth it in the end! I also like the fact that there’s an integrity in their music, with an unwillingness to bow to commercial pressure in the artistic process. Having said that, they are clearly very commercially ‘savvy’ in the way they market and release their stuff. The NME has said of the new album:

This is an avant-garde record, and most definitely not a return to the crowd-pleasing songwriting of the OK Computer era. In a sense it’s a continuation of In Rainbows in that Radiohead have now worked out how to be experimental without sacrificing the human element. As on that record, they display the knack of sounding deceptively machine-like. It sounds electronic even when it isn’t – but there’s always a pearl of soulfulness hidden within.

I’m now off to bed to listen to this final record of the day on my best Sennheiser headphones!

Update: After this close listen on headphones, I would say it has amazing richness, depth and humanity!

I love song lyrics as they can be hugely expressive, comparing favourably with the best poetry! I also enjoy sharing lyrics (and I know other people do as well), so I’ve created this special day for sharing lyrics on social media as updates. Put February 16 in your diary and start thinking of your favourite lyrics! There’s a Facebook Event which you can join and invite others to join. Please spread the word! The hashtag to use for anything related to the day is #songlyricsday and this is especially important on Twitter.

You may have been drawn to this post by the unusual title! In the UK, an ASBO is an Anti-Social Behaviour Order given by the courts to people who are deemed to be constant trouble in their neighbourhoods. The cartoons always give you something to think about, and often have a sting in the tail! Incidentally, I chose this particular cartoon because it relates to the post What is Reality?

…continued. An interesting film was about the Bristol Cycle Project. They take old or unused bikes and make them available to people in the community. So many bikes are just in storage in people’s garages, this project gets them back into use. In their workshop they rebuild or service the bikes with the assistance of the people who will benefit from them. They help people to help themselves, involvement with the project and commitment of time and effort means they value the bikes and can contribute something. Asylum seekers are particularly finding the project helpful. There is much misunderstanding about asylum seekers, and the film told some terrible personal stories of refugees from Somalia and Afghanistan. A bike gives freedom and independence, and so becomes a physical metaphor for what these refugees long for.

Freetown is the capital and largest city in Sierra Leone and, over 200 years after the abolition of slavery, the people living in poverty here still see themselves as slaves. The question has to be asked, are these people really free? In a film made up of entirely of people voicing their thoughts and feelings, it became clear that that are still captives to the rich and powerful, both inside and outside their country and to a system which allows it. The women were particularly vocal in expressing how their voices need to be heard. Ironically, one of the streets in Freetown is called Wilberforce Street!

A very colourful and energetic film followed showing a Latin American carnival in Nottingham. What came through very strongly was the importance of the arts for culture and community. We neglect the arts at our peril, for they help to define people’s culture, identity and freedom.

The final film I watched was about Alice Hawkins, a woman who lived most of her life in Leicester. She was a factory worker who became a suffragette and champion for women’s rights. Alice’s story is an inspiring one, and there is a website set up by her family to honour her memory and work.

It was a great festival and plans are in hand for the DocFilm Festival in 2012, but over 3 days instead of 1!

As I mentioned yesterday, the Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre hosted the first DocFilm Festival in Leicester today and, as I write this, it’s still happening until 11.30 pm with live music! It was organised by my friend John Coster and Citizens Eye, and I was pleased to be involved in a very small way – I helped to put up posters! It was an energising day; creatively, culturally, socially and physically (I cycled there and back).

The Phoenix Centre is an excellent venue for events such as this, one large and one medium sized cinemas, a more compact film room and many other user-friendly rooms. A variety of documentary films were on show during the day, from shorts (some less than 10 minutes) through to full-length features. The main film I saw was A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash which presented a stark vision of the world as we run out of cheap oil.

The first short I watched was entitled Leicester Diversity, something I’ve experienced first hand since moving here. Leicester is a wonderful place to live, and a wide range of national statistics back this up. A Zimbabwean political refugee described how he escaped Mugabe’s regime, arrived in London and eventually settled in Leicester. He described it as the quietest (?) and best place he’d lived. Manjula Sood praised Leicester’s diversity and encouraged communities to believe in themselves and celebrate their different cultures.

This was followed by a film that expressed hope for people with a disability through a beautiful song. The basic message was that the main character was born on a different side of life, but he felt the same as anyone else! Stars reach out and tell us there’s always one escape. We made our lives on wasteland, as through the barricades. The film ended with him finding love and fulfilment in life.

A documentary about life on a Leicester estate since 1945 followed. It showed the effects of economic policies and trends on family life over those years, and the focus was particularly on the Thatcher years and the resultant poverty and despair. The next film was more uplifting, and it was good to have the film-makers, fathers and children featured in the audience. It presented very positive role-models for fathers and their children, and I found it refreshing.

To be continued…

On Saturday 22 January 2011 the Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre (Leicester) is hosting the first DocFilm Festival in the city. This is being organised by my friend John Coster and Citizens Eye. If you live in Leicester, maybe you can come along for all or part of the day. It runs from 11:30 to 23:30, and there is live music in the evening. Plans are already in hand for the DocFilm Festival in 2012 over 3 days!

As I cycled across Leicester today, to attend a weekly meeting of the University of Leicester Chaplaincy, I was thinking about the gears on my mountain bike (21 by the way, but I generally only use the middle 7). The gears, of course, are known as derailleur gears, and that got me thinking about the title of the classic rock album by Cream.

The title of the album was taken from an inside joke. Eric Clapton had been thinking of buying a racing bicycle and was discussing it with Ginger Baker, when a roadie named Mick Turner commented, “it’s got them Disraeli Gears”, meaning to say “derailleur gears,” but instead alluding to 19th Century British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. The band thought this was hilarious, and decided that it should be the title of their next album. Had it not been for Mick’s turn of phrase, the album would simply have been entitled “Cream.” (Wikipedia)

Incidentally, the album contains the track Sunshine of Your Love which is largely responsible my interest in rock music after I heard it covered by a school rock band called “The Dark” in Northampton. With hindsight I should have bought the album they released, because I heard a few years ago it had become a collectable!

Today’s Google logo is a pastiche of one of Cézanne’s still life paintings, with the objects forming the name of the ubiquitous search engine. It was commissioned because today is the painter’s 172nd birthday! Cézanne is one of my favourite artists, and I especially love his landscapes (example above) and still life paintings.

Wikipedia describes his work in this way: Cézanne’s work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, tone, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields, at once both a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye and an abstraction from observed nature. The paintings convey Cézanne’s intense study of his subjects, a searching gaze and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.

The movie Closer originally started out as a stage play, and was adapted by the author Patrick Marber and directed by Mike Nichols. It’s a very powerful, uncompromising and honest drama about modern relationships, and I watched it on DVD this evening. The four actors give very convincing performances of the chance meetings of their characters, their instant attractions and brutal betrayals. The drama is seen by some as a modern and tragic version of Mozart‘s opera Così fan tutte, as there are references to the opera in both the plot and the soundtrack, and one of the key scenes is set in an opera house. You can find out more about the movie at IMDb and (spoiler alert) Wikipedia. One final note of caution though, the movie (and the Wikipedia entry) does contain very strong language and overt sexual references! Not for the easily offended!