The Sketches of Leonardo

• March 23, 2009
  6 Comments // Creativity

It’s not uncommon for anyone even remotely interested in art to have an interest in the life and work of Leonardo Da Vinci. Nor is it uncommon for creatives to have a thing for peering into the sketch books of others to satisfy a creative curiosity as to how someone thinks and develops their ideas. I know I fall hard into both camps, so I thought I might bring the two together. Let’s have a look at the brilliant sketchbooks of the old master.

The power of Leonardo’s works is undeniable. While he may have only produced a handful of finished pieces, the impact he left is second to none. Below are the sketches for two of the most well known and renowned pieces of creative work the world has ever known.

These illustrations move me. Not because of what they are depicting, but because of the quality and care and craft that was put into them.

As a graphic designer, I have a love for seeing the sketch books of creatives, as I’m sure you do too. There’s something to looking into the development of a piece of work you admire — to see how it was constructed, how the idea came to fruition—it’s interesting and exciting.

The notes are mostly observations or little tidbits I read while putting this all together, that make the imagery a little more interesting.

The Last Supper

Easily in the top two of Leonardo’s most renowned pieces, The Last Supper was commissioned by his employer of the time, the Duke of Milan, in 1495 and took three years to complete.

While the painting has deteriorated horribly over the years, what makes it so special is so easily seen — the emotion and expressions strewn across the faces of those at the table are stunning. The detail in their skin, hair and clothes are of such high quality and rich detail that it can be hard to easily understand the depth and complexity emotion and body language shown.

Let’s start with a good look at the finished product. This is the moment in the Biblical story that Jesus says that he will be betrayed by one of those sitting with him. Looking closely at the expressions, you’ll noticed surprise, anger, fear and sadness, which up to this point weren’t always shown in such legitimately human ways in previous representations of this scene by other artists.

Now moving on to the sketches! This was an initial draft done hastily to establish position and proportion, done as if he had excitedly realised how he was going to compose the image.

How To Achieve An Impossible Task

• January 21, 2009
  8 Comments // Creativity

One of the most memorable lessons learned while studying design had nothing to do with layout, typography, color or any other facet of the syllabus. It had absolutely nothing to do with design, but effected how to go about doing it. It was how to work furiously and complete a conceivably impossible task.

After expressing an interest in using ink for illustration but not feeling confident enough in my abilities, my teacher of the time set me to task on something that caused many a cursed word to spill. Before I had ever illustrated a single image using ink, he told me I was to deliver to him a book full of illustrations by the following class. A full book in a week. How I was meant to achieve this man-walking-on-the-moon goal was beyond me. But there wasn’t enough time to sit around and think about how I couldn’t do it—
I had work to do and I was shitting myself.

***

After a week of working furiously and completely changing my routine,
I proudly, and a little arrogantly, presented my book of illustrations,
which was greeted with a somber flicking-through, then closed and commented on.
With a sadistic smile, he uttered ‘… good on you, now double it by next week –
two more books.’ More words of the cursed spilled.

***

When the day to present came, something remarkable happened. He gingerly went through this new duo of books, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
A few minutes passed and we started talking.

‘Look at this one … then this one – what do you notice?’

Well, you evil son-of-a-bitch, I notice hours upon hours of my life sucked into over 300 pages of shitty illustrations.
‘That one.. is a little better than the first.’

Why Do Creatives Create?

• November 6, 2008
  8 Comments // Creativity

What is it in us that makes us want to create? Why do we want to take nothing and fill it with something? Why do we desire to take that which is inside us, be it an idea, question or emotion and express it through colour and shape? Why is this urge satisfied for only a moment? Why do we create?

For some of us the question of ‘why do I do this?’ plagues us as it evasively makes its way into our minds. Once we stop for a moment to ponder this simple question, its importance and dominance in our brain grows stronger and stronger as each answer drives a path for more questions of self-reasoning.

We subject our selves to creative mood swings as we fly around the spectrum of emotion—from the pleasures of witnessing the works of others to ecstasy as we manage to produce a piece of work which balances our mind and body, and just feels right. Sometimes it’s anguish felt when we see someone provoking emotion better than we can or even anger, after hours of our time and portions of our souls are spent, yet we still can’t quite get it right.

We subject our selves to creative mood swings
as we fly around the spectrum of emotion

And of course there are the clients. We become creatives for hire, subjecting our work to the whims of the client as they make it a little bluer or make the logo bigger. But before we go into why designers design, let’s ponder why creatives create.

To create is to solve a problem. To answer questions. At least this might be the case for any piece of creative work that means anything. Sometimes the question is ‘how can I evoke an emotion?’ or, ‘how do I stop them from forgetting?’. It might also lay on the other side of the above, in that rather than trying to evoke something, it must solve the problem of how to capture an emotion.

If a tree falls

• October 27, 2008
  2 Comments // Creativity

Oh overnight success, why do we long for thee with such desperation? Why does ignorance plague us as we cry a thousand tears in search of receiving something for nothing? To us fools, the kings of the wise bestow upon us an illuminating guide of words to save us from ourselves — ‘Snap out of it. It isn’t going to happen’.

Instant success is a scary idea. For starters, if you were to gain a louder voice than you currently have, you wouldn’t know how to use it properly. Imagine going from an audience of ten to one of 10,000. Without knowing how to talk to 10,000 people your audience will dwindle back to ten fairly quickly. Any one who has been struck by an arrow shot by the archer that is on the team of the social networks knows this. How often can you sustain the numbers you get from a social network spike? Yeah, exactly.

When you start a creative endeavor, be it illustration, design or blogging, it isn’t going to be a case of instant popularity — it takes months and years to build a base which will lead to ‘overnight success’. It’s this base that you build that will lead to recognition—not being ‘discovered’. This is a great time to learn and explore that which you are passionately starting. This is a phase which should be embraced, not ignored or rushed through.

This is a phase which should be embraced,
not ignored or rushed through

The Garden of the Mind ~ Part Two

• August 2, 2008
  2 Comments // Creativity

In part one we looked at how intuition isn’t something that we are born with, but it is something that we develop. We plant the seeds to our creativity almost constantly—tending to the shoots that grow if we are drawn to what is planted and defining what it is that makes up the weeds of our garden. It is how we determine what is good and what is bad, sometimes without being able to verbally express it, just feeling it. However, a problem may arise in that we sometimes have trouble finding our ways back to the right plants when we need to. We need a map of our gardens. Let’s call it inspiration.

One of the earlier paragraphs in part one stated that if our imagination were a garden, then all the marks we see is the life that grows from the soil that is our memory. What these seeds are, is every manifestation of creativity we see, from posters to magazines, or music and movies. Some of these plants are beautiful and some ugly, but both are important. The ugly helps us know what the beautiful is, while the beautiful lets us know what the ugly doesn’t have.

Intuition is our subconscious roaming this garden

We also established that intuition is our subconscious roaming this garden. When we are working, or see a creative piece, our mind references everything that is in our garden to figure out if we conceive it as being good or bad – if it is worth spending time looking at and absorbing, or just glossing over. While we do this subconsciously more often than not, when we are under stress, be it of a deadline, demanding client or high expectations, we run around our garden like a child on too much sugar and forget what direction north is. So what we need is a compass to guide us home.

Inspiration

I think for a lot of people inspiration is something that is seeked out to give a direct solution to a problem. My issue with this is that the solution is found in the inspiring—the ideas found are copied, rather than the inspiration being used as a trigger for further exploration and a variety of solutions. Nobody likes copy-cat work, nor do they like solutions wrapped in inappropriate clothes – the creative, the artist or designer succumbs to what is fashionable, what is in style.

Inspiration is a guide – a key to unlocking
the places worth visiting on our mental landscape

For me, inspiration is a guide – a key to unlocking the places worth visiting on our mental landscape. All our memories are part of a tangled web, lightly connected to one another. When we have strong memories, a strong understanding of something, the tracks between relevant memories are well trodden. For example, the idea of a home cooked meal evokes memories of my family, my childhood home, all of my favorite meals and a thousand other tangents. These memories are important to me because the nightly, home cooked meal eaten around the table, was and is an important thing for me. It’s a memory of safety, comfort and love. I don’t just remember the name of a meal I liked, but use it as a starting off point to all of that listed. The tracks between all of these are deep. The same is true of all the marks in your garden that are special.

Some of the tracks between our memories are weak,
while others are vibrantly strong

The Garden of the Mind ~ Part One

• July 25, 2008
  6 Comments // Creativity

In the garden of the mind, creativity is something that needs to be tended to with constant love and care. The ability to come up with an idea out of thin air is a myth — it just never happens. The ideas come from somewhere in our minds as a mix of past experiences, opinions and all that which is creative that has been planted in the soil of our memories, dance and play and mix together. In the first part of this two part piece, we’ll explore intuition and where it stems from.

The development of your intuition can be broken down into two parts:

1. A constant longing to absorb knowledge, be it visual, audible or written. The first, for me and I’m willing to bet most of you, being the most important.
2. Asking questions and making as many marks as you can. Of these marks, it is the wrong ones you’ll learn from the most, so we can’t be afraid of doing wrong over and over – as long as we do not make the same mistake twice.

Let’s visualise our creativity and intuition as something akin to a garden or landscape. The earth is our minds and all that lays upon it are our memories. Before this land is worth roaming, we need to fill it with as much life as possible, otherwise it’ll be a rather fruitless trip. Luckily, the seeds we need are easy to find and plant.

Seeds of Creative Thinking

These seeds hide in everything around us, so make sure you see as much as possible, not letting anything get by without a second glance, under a different light and from another angle. From a poster that stops you dead in your tracks to the pattern on the sweater of the person in front of you, the seeds to your garden are every where. Try to find that something special in everything and you’ll have a beautiful garden of the mind to venture within. Every song, every book, every movie. Every vain on a leaf, every spot on an animal and every swirl of dust dancing in the wind holds something special for someone.

Every swirl of dust dancing in the wind
holds something special for someone

Clarity in Quality

• May 11, 2008
  Nil Comments // Creativity

Why is one movie better than another? Why do we prefer the writings of this author over that one? Why do some pieces of art make our hearts sing while others make us flatline? Quality is personal taste not owned by anyone else, not always describable but, without a doubt, felt. So why don’t we put more thought into how we define quality?

Quality helps us to grade something. The problem a lot of us face is that our value of quality isn’t something we actively try to develop. We have an idea of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ and whatever is ‘bad’ we try to eliminate from our scope. So what happens when we remove all the bad, or low, quality things from our lives and we’re only left with the good, or high, quality stuff? What we should be doing is removing all the low quality things from our lives and then looking at what is left. Then adding to the high quality end of the spectrum and continually removing from the low quality end. In other words, what you consider is good now, needs to be replaced with what’s great, pushing the good, down into the bad and then being removed completely.

What can happen if we don’t do this is that we’ll float from one piece of creative output (books, movies, albums) that we think are pretty good, to something else that we think is pretty good, somewhat grading the next on the previous, but not really considering how they might affect our own creative output, not really looking elsewhere for inspiration or ideas. Variety is a good thing, a really good thing, if you’re a creative person. It’s important that we look for new inputs, we need to look for a new experience we are fairly sure will be bad, but have a slight chance of being great. If it is bad, then no harm dealt, you’ll be less likely to give something like it a shot in the future, but at least you gave it a go. But what if it’s great? What if it’s something that changes your life for the better and introduces you to a whole new world? When we’re young, most things are new and it doesn’t take long for us to realise we’ll love something or hate it. As we get older, we throw a fence around what we like, never letting anything new in, or old out, because it might not be worth it and will be a waste of our valuable time, right? The problem is that it’s harder to grow in any meaningful way if we constantly receive the same experiences over and over.

they should be tentative guides at best

That Which Drives Us (Motivation)

• February 17, 2008
  Nil Comments // Creativity

To be the best you can be, to be the best there is, to eat, to eat the finest. To grow your talents, to be highly regarded and to be respected. For the love of your craft.

Motivation is what drives us. Motivation to be the best you can be, to be the best there is, to eat, to eat the finest. To grow your talents, to be highly regarded and to be respected. For the love of your craft. Unfortunately, you can run out of fuel from time to time and this is a resource that’s a lot harder to come by than the stuff that gets your car moving. Even worse – it can be debilitation if the engine that is your creativity goes boom. So how do you avoid and get out of the slump that this can cause?

The first and easiest solution is pretty simple – just let it happen. Ride it out. There isn’t always a quick fix solution if you find yourself in the middle of a slump. In my, albeit, rather short thus far, creative life, I’ve had two major slumps worth remembering. These things would last a week or two and I’d have no interesting in doing my work, didn’t worry about what the results might be and simply – just didn’t care. Luckily i was studying both times, so it didn’t really affect things a great deal. The reason they lasted so long was because I kept trying to break through it. I thought that if I kept doing my assignments, that eventually I would just explode and be flooded with amazing ideas. Turns out, this isn’t quite how it works.

Ideas have to be nurtured and loved

Style & Voice

• February 14, 2008
  Nil Comments // Creativity

As we grow and develop as creatives, certain traits in our work become our trademarks. Our personal tastes become badges and identifiers. These visual footprints can develop in
two different ways—one is organic and the other is almost artificial. One is voice, the other style.

Both of these help push along a career in different ways. A designer who works at the forefront of style, relies on what’s currently in.This can be a more versatile way of working as you’d adapt to your environment whenever it changes, which means you could almost always deliver what might be considered cutting edge at the time. On the other hand, the designer who doesn’t rely on a style, which is focused by the changing of the winds, develops a folio of work which is morep ersonal—a folio in which they can see themselves.

What you are delivering is good, quality design,
because that is what the environment is saying

The beauty of working with style is that it’s a lot easier to make work look good. Because your font of choice is currently in vogue, your end product’s quality goes up a couple of notches in your clients mind. A client might feel that what you are delivering is good, quality design,because that is what their environment is telling them through print ads, media ads, the internet and all other mediums they are hit with on a daily basis. All a designer has to do is look at all of these things for a period of time and they will develop an eye for what is moving out of fashion (because it’s being used by many) and where things are moving (because it’s successfully being used by a few). As long as they can stay within that small group of designers employing the latest thing, they will continue to look good, in the lifespan of the finished product. Not a bad deal, huh? Keep your eyes open, adapt, cash the cheques. Before you know it you won’t even have to consciously keep an eye out, it’ll become natural.