(Note to my readers: I
want to apologize for not being able to get to these postings up in a more
timely fashion, but I hope that you will find the wait to be worth it.)
To begin at the beginning, I’ve been a teacher for many,
many years, and there has been a constant little niggling problem in the back
of my mind. That is, how to stimulate
the creative powers in an individual, in students, and myself included? And supposing that if I could do that, how
can I find a way to teach it to others?
Clearly, it has something to do with our brains. Are some just more insightful, more talented
than others? I don’t think so. I think that everyone has potential, has
undeveloped awareness of talents and abilities.
So how can these creative resources be tapped and released?
Recently I ran into a book, printed in 1987, which starts
out by raising these same questions. How
could I have missed it so long? I must
have been blind, or it just wasn’t the moment of readiness. But now I want to share the reference for
this treasure which I’ve been using in my classes. I will be referring to it from time to time
in the up-coming creative journaling series of posts: “Drawing on the Artist Within,”
by Betty Edwards, (ISBN 0-671-63514-X pbk).
If at all possible, please try to locate a copy. I’ll be citing from it
from time to time.
I readily admit that my background is in the arts and
literature. I am not a scientist, and as
such I know that it is a gross over-simplification just to blithely assume that
the brain has two parts, left and right, and that each side is in charge of
different human thinking processes. In
fact, we are woefully ignorant about the brain and how it works, and brain research
is in its infancy. But we have to start
this dialogue somewhere, in order to think about it at all, so here goes.
A diagram summarizes some of the Right and Left Brain modes
(p. 12).
Left –Mode Right-Mode
Verbal Nonverbal
Syntactical Perceptual
Linear Global
Sequential Simultaneous
Analytic Synthetic
Logical Intuitive
Symbolic Concrete
Temporal Non-temporal
Digital Spatial
In Chapter 1 (pp. 2-9) of the text, there is an excellent
summary of the historical context concerning research into the creative
process, divided into five stages, as follows:
R First
Insight: A sudden awareness (What?
What if?)
L Saturation: Obtaining
information (Need data…)
R Incubation: Thinking about it (How could it be?)
R “Aha!”: Sudden insight (Eureka!
That’s it!)
L Verification: Checking
(Does it really work?)
So if there are two sides to the brain, which side is doing
the heavy lifting? And the answer is
(taa-daa) both are, but in different stages of the process (above, R= Right
Brain Mode, L= Left Brain Mode).
So now we have a problem.
Much of our educational system is geared toward training the left brain:
language, reading, counting, formulas, data, facts, dates, etc. However the right brain likes music, colors,
dancing, drawing, art, patterns, etc.
And though I hate to admit it, if we spend all our time just writing in
our journals, the result is that they are going to become products of the left
brain. That, unhappily, leaves out a
great deal of creative input. So how do we begin to have more creative input
into our simple habit of journaling?
Well, it turns out that one good way is to wake up and stimulate the right brain
for more of its input, and drawing is one way to do that. It doesn’t matter if you think you can’t
draw. Just try these activities to get
started. Don’t be a critic. Be brave.
Just jump in and do it. And don’t
throw them out. Either draw them in your
journal, or put them on paper and save them in a folder for later use.
Activities (p. 15):
~ Activity #1: Draw your hand.
~ Activity #2: Draw a person (live, magazine, yourself?)
~ Activity #3: Draw an object
Some Words of Encouragement to Get Started:
v
Remember, this is not art. It is to stimulate R-mode.
v
It’s good to try something new.
v
It’s common to lose awareness of time
passing when working in the R-mode. Just
let it happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment