How I learned to make mistakes and gained creativity in my
Travel Journal
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| Image by Daniel Smith |
When I bought my first Travel Journal, Sketchbook or Carnet
de Voyage, I marveled at the white, empty pages of heavy paper that begged to
be written with a fountain pen and thick black ink. Although I had been living
in Paris for several years, my dream was to sit in a corner café with a travel
book and write, sketch and capture the moment for all to experience.
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| Image by Daniel Smith |
At our first class of a half dozen WICE Members and our WICE
Instructor, artist Jan Olsson, we learned to test our pens and markers on
scratch paper. Using scissors we cut patterns of our lines and circles to glue
onto pages. We wrote descriptions and stories of life in Paris. “Hey, this is
easy,” I said; there was no drawing or complexities.
Based on a demonstration by Jan, I could not wait to buy
markers of black, gray and light gray to create the illusion of distance and
depth. Once I found the markers, I started a Paris city-scape on the inside
cover and facing first page. Easy. Just
as Jan explained I used dark in the foreground and lighter greys in the middle
and background and quickly my city-scape was finished! But when I turned the
page, to my horror, I realized that the ink had bled through the first page
onto the second. My new travel journal was already permanently ruined.
A strange thing happened when I showed this mistake to
several close friends. They liked the second page bleed-through mistake better
than the first page. Huh? I had to admit that my mistake was not so terrible.
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| Image by Daniel Smith |
Since my first “mistake,” I made even more serious and
permanent “errors” but I found that most people absolutely admired my travel
book, mistakes and all. Jan Olsson showed us a book of Frida Kahlor’s journal and she had even more bleed-through than I.
Frida and Jan Olsson had given me a license to make mistakes
and I freely made laughable and permanent “errors.” But no one laughed.
Instead, when I showed my sketchbook to friends and family, everyone was
delighted. My creativity and confidence soared along with my sketching skills
gently guided by Jan.
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| Image by Daniel Smith |
During an exercise on drawing lines in the style of Paul
Klee, I was roughly sketching his drawing “Underwater” that he completed in the
South Pacific. My logical brain relaxed and my creativity was set free. In
completing the sketch, I added whiskers to the cat that Paul Klee had obviously
forgotten. It was only on my way home from class that my left-brain started to
wake that I realized that Paul Klee had not at all forgotten the whiskers
because it was not a cat. It was underwater plants. Another mistake but my cat
was my creation, certainly not a mistake.
It became fun to make mistakes that turned out to be
creative experiments. I was drawing. I had learned to make mistakes and reach a
higher level of personal creativity feeling unashamed as strangers look over my
shoulder as I sketched in a corner café.
In Jan Olsson's courses, such as the upcoming Creating Travel Journals: Celebrating Daily Life in Paris, she will give you a license to make mistakes, release your creativity, and develop your drawing skills.
For More Information and to Register:
When: Thursdays, June 4, 11, 18, and 25, 2015
Time: 14h - 16h
Location: Artist's Studio, 75015 Paris, Metro: Balard