The Mental Process of Creation

Today’s Mary Magdalene drawing-In progress

My drawing today is in progress because I want to do a background that I don’t yet have an idea for. But I will let ideas flow tonight, and tomorrow I will know what to do.

That’s how it works. Time is good for ideas, and trusting that they will come to you is essential. I work at everything that way. Sometimes I go to sleep so that my mind can work on an idea. I solve work problems, art problems, design problems, decor problems, everybody’s problems… that way.

At other times, I just sit and do it. It’s the same process, but it can be more difficult.

The best way is to be able to think, dream and let your mind work for as long as you need, and then go and do the entire piece in one sitting. If it’s a big piece, it’s important to be able to continue after each break. This is why artists sometimes disappear, and then reemerge with a whole body of work.

In my experience, if you leave the piece and go do something else, the energy or momentum dies, and you have to reconnect with the piece when you finally manage to get back to it. I haven’t figured out how to solve that problem yet. The only solution when this happens is to stay with it, and love it again. Because the process of creating art is about loving the work and the moment, feeling that sense of wonder and expectation, and also loving the process.

And when you lose all connection to your work because you are too tired to think, sometimes it’s great to do something for fun. Like this little journal I designed today for a friend’s granddaughter. The little girl asked her grandmother for a book that she could use to draw and paint. I designed her this blank journal-perfect bound notebook with an image I once designed for a mural in a school.

Image, front of journal. For the journal, I used a Canva pattern as a background to make it playful and colorful.

Final version-There will be a lavender edge around the pattern. I look forward to seeing the printed book!

Journal with Mary Magdalene image and blank cream paper.

Creating art or anything that didn’t exist before is about trust and faith. Even though you know that you have to put some work into making it real, you also know that it can become a reality when you let your mind do the work in a way that it can flow without fear or restraint. Our body is the instrument to make it happen.

Haven’t we heard that before somewhere? I’m talking about art, and it also applies to life.