Lockdown Day 11: Creativity and Michelangelo

I admire the work of any artist. I cannot draw or paint to save my life. I can only just manage colouring in and even that is poorly done. I can see beauty, skill, messages in the work of artists, whether they are famous, infamous or without a public audience. My sister is able to draw and paint and extends her creative skills to her amazing craft work; one of my daughters creates beautiful artwork in both traditional and digital media.  Whilst I learnt to sew and knit as I was growing up, I never had quite the same flair for colour and style choices, but could follow a pattern. Not my own creativity, I thought, just following in someone else’s footsteps. 

 It took me a long while to see any creativity in what I was doing. My background was science and engineering before I went into teaching. Not particularly creative I thought. But maybe the logical side of that training helped me spot patterns and think creatively about problems at work. 

There are all kinds of creativity. My husband's skills and creativity are practical and he enjoys nothing more than tinkering on his workbench and restoring a machine back to working order. Another daughter expresses her creativity through music. Maybe you are the sort of creative person who can create something out of nothing, maybe out of necessity (See Lockdown Blog Day 10).  Maybe your creativity is taking chaos in your home and creating into some sort of order. Maybe your creativity is in the garden. Maybe you’re creating new ways to help those around you. Maybe you are an entrepreneur.

What I have learnt, though, is that there are some things that help develop our creativity:

• Have a willingness to learn - from others, from books, from YouTube
  
• Be prepared to try new things - maybe you just haven’t found your niche yet
  
• Be prepared to fail, fail again, fail better - it won’t be perfect at the start
  
• Stick with it and keep practising the skills you learn
  
• Once you are confident with the skills, explore tweaks, refinements, improvements and take inspiration from everything around you
  

God bless!

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