Visualizing Ideas
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Evolving Ideas / Joining Two Bags / Variations On a Theme / Reversing / Associating Ideas / Making Metaphors
Technically, an idea is something that happens in the mind, and a sketch is something that happens on paper. In most drawing, however, these two processes are merged. Ideas inspire sketches, and sketches trigger ideas. You go back and forth. Unlike the cartoon ideal, ideas are not usually like little bright lightbulbs. More often than not they are fragments—bits and pieces that need to be assembled to create a cohesive whole. Because a mental image often fades quickly, capturing it on paper is key to visualizing. This often means that you start drawing before you know your exact destination. The alternative—thinking long and hard about what you’re going to draw—has the effect of erasing each little idea as you wait for the big one. This is not a good creative strategy. It is true that every once in a while you will get a clear vision of exactly what you want to draw. That’s lovely when it happens, but most of the time drawing is about generating and transforming. You take something and do something to it. You get comfortable knowing that things will not end up just as you planned. You can’t predict where it will take you. You need both a vision and a willingness to depart from it. That’s the nature of creativity.
Words and Pictures Where does a visual idea originate? Does it start with an image or words? The answer, in my own view, is that it can start either way. Ideas are part words and part image. Words and images together constitute a kind of double description—the same concept available in two different modes and located in two different parts of the brain. Song lyrics like “blue eyes cryin’ in the rain” or “she keeps her face in a jar by the door” create an immediate mental image. Your image will be different from mine, but we will each create a distinct personal picture from those lyrics. Appreciating this link between the visual and the verbal enhances creative freedom. Your visual sense takes the lead as you draw, but from time to time words will help.
I started this drawing with just the airplane and chorus line. Then I added the guy on the trapeze, then the cowboys, then the horse. I might have gone further, but I ran out of paper.
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