Learning to be Creative

For most of my life, I've been searching for ways to creatively express myself. For the most part, I haven't felt all that successful in the various art classes required in school [though I had a later start than many of my classmates in that I don't recall doing any kind of art classes or projects in the school I attended for the first 4 grades]. And I wasn't really encouraged in artisitic endeavors in my youth.

When I was 10, I did start playing around a little bit with a point-and-shoot camera and, over time, I really came to enjoy it. Not necessarily as a way to create art [that thought didn't cross my mind] but it was a means to hold on to the memories-in-the-making. As the collection of photos grew, I started making my own scrapbooks--sometimes cutting the pictures into various shapes, adding titles, making comments, etc.

Over time, I did start receiving positive comments which encouraged me to continue down the photographic path. Since I'm the kind of person that learns by [seeing and] doing, I loved to experiment. At various times, though still getting some positive feedback, there were comments like 'you take too many pictures', 'that idea won't work', 'what do you want to do THAT for?', etc. In some ways discouraging but these comments pushed me to do that much more; after all, how are we to learn if we don't try?

Reading is another thing that's always been a part of my life. Maybe not a lot of really deep stuff but I loved reading about other places, lifestyles, how to do expand the horizons... In high school and college, writing was fun, too. Though I enjoyed doing it MY way which often wasn't the technically 'right' way but that's ok with me.

Jumping forward in time: About 10 years ago, I started getting back into my scrapbooking again with doing more with journalling the stories, often adding the behind the scenes stuff to the stories that the photos told. And more recently, maybe the last 5 years or so, I expanded into other areas in the paper arts realm including rubber stamping, greeting cards, and making & trading artist trading cards [these cards are so cool!!].

But still, I'm not at the point where I feel I'm expressing myself all that creatively. I guess it's a life long process. To help develop it, though, I'm participating in an on-line group and going through the book called 'The Artist Way' [I'll have to look up the author's name; I *think* it's Julia Cameron or something close]. This book is set up as a 12-week course and it serves as a means to explore, unblock, and expand our creativity. It can help with all areas and forms of art, be in music, writing, photography, painting, whatever. So this group has started this week and it should be interesting.