Creativity tips – How limits can be good for your creativity – insights learnt from Week 2 of my Play Adventure

Posted on June 25, 2015 by Natalia

Wow! It’s hard to believe how fast I hit the week two mark of my mandala Play Adventure (you can see how it all started here). This week I really tested the limits of what I could do through this exercise in terms of ‘colouring in’ a mandala every day.

This week’s mandalas were very different from what I created in week 1. I purposely didn’t try to colour within the lines. But I also tried to remain respectful of the original mandala form within the mandala colouring page. Needless to say, it created an interesting tension and dynamic between following the rules and wanting to break out of them.

So my key insight from this week related to the value of self-imposed limits in sparking creativity.

Inner Creative - Blog on How Limits Can Be Good for Your Creativity - innercreative.com.au

At face value, one might think that the opposite was true – that rules and limits would be counterproductive to creativity. But I think that it relates to the nature of the task and its timing.

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Creativity Tips – Creating a creativity habit – What I’ve learnt from Week 1 of my Play Adventure

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Natalia

Last week I decided to embark on a Play Adventure where I would colour in my Mandala Colouring Page every day for 30 days. Well, it’s been a week already! Wow! Seven days of play :-).

I’ve really enjoyed having this time to play. It’s been nice to have some downtime where I don’t have to worry about anything else and can just be free to be guided by my intuition and curiosity. I’ve also had the opportunity to try out some different mediums (such as my new pastel and Inktense pencils).

As expected, this commitment to creating a mandala each day has also raised some challenges. Consequently, it has also helped me identify (and reinforce) some creativity tips and what helps me be creative and find time to deliver on my commitment.

Here’s an overview of my first 7 designs.

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Embarking on my own ‘Play Adventure’

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Natalia

My previous blog about play and experimentation was inspired by an “I wonder…?” question of my own. Recently, I discovered my first mandala hidden amongst my old high school graphic folder. I was curious to see what it could look like with different colouring. So I created my own colouring page and tried out a different colour combination, and then another. Without too much trouble or planning I had stumbled onto finding something to play with.

The other day I started wondering about what the mandala outline would look like in orange and green, which subsequently got me wondering about how many different ways I could ‘colour in’ the colouring page. This train of thought then lead me to wonder if I could colour in the same mandala page every day for a week. In doing so, I reasoned that it would be a great test of my creativity and inventiveness, while also giving me plenty of discussion and blog fodder by exposing me to common creativity issues, like making mistakes, persistence and being open and comfortable with the unknown.

But then, a week didn’t seem quite daring enough. Would it really push my limits? So what about 3 weeks? Hmmm… What about 30 days? A 30 day challenge? But the term ‘challenge’ didn’t seem to convey the right spirit. I really liked the idea of playing around and seeing this as a fun exploration, but I really had no idea where this exercise would take me. And then it dawned on me – I’d call it a ‘play adventure’!

So starting Monday 6 April, I have embarked on a play adventure where I will ‘colour in’ my Mandala Colouring Page each day for 30 days (Just in time for my Exploring Mandalas class that starts on Wednesday 6 May 🙂 ).To make sure that I stay accountable and increase my likelihood of delivering on what I propose, I’m making this promise publicly on my blog with the intention of posting my daily efforts on my Inner Creative Facebook page. You can see my first day’s effort below.

Who knows where a little wondering and play will take me? Continue reading →

What or where can you trace your creativity back to?

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Natalia

I recently discovered a treasure when I was sorting through some of my old school assignments that my mum had unearthed from her cupboards. It was a graphics design assignment called “Compass Design” that I had done back in Year 8 of high school. I got a bit of shock when to my surprise I discovered that I’d made my first mandala at age 13.

I can’t actually remember creating this design. And I am not sure what the brief was for this assignment – my only assumption is that we had to use a compass. However, I can’t imagine that my ‘no nonsense’ graphics teacher would have asked us to create a design based on a mandala. In any case, I never even knew what a mandala was until a few years ago. So that’s why finding this little gem amongst my old school documents was such a lovely find. Continue reading →

How are you going to live your big dream today?

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Natalia

With the start of a new year there’s lot of talk about resolutions, setting goals and dreaming of the future.

I think that it’s important to dream, explore the possibilities, and imagine what could happen. We need something to aim for, inspire us, and to help us work out which way to go and what choices to make. But sometimes our dreams can feel a little too big, almost impossible. Some may tell you to give up on your ‘fantasy’, or to translate it into something more realistic and manageable.

I say ‘ Dream big, step small.’ We need to stretch ourselves and our possibilities And we can’t do that if we’re staying small and in the realm of tangible fact and our current day reality. So, go for it! Dream big, step small.

So you might think that the rest of this blog might be about how to work backwards from your big dream and chunk it down into smaller steps that you can slowly work through towards your dream. And that’s a totally valid and sensible way of going about it. However, I’m going to talk about how to go even smaller, and to think about what you can do today: how are you going to live your big dream today? Continue reading →