In CreativityWise we divide the creative process to 5 distinct elements, each color-coded throughout the site for clarity. Four of them are explained in the second introduction post (if you haven’t seen it yet, it would be a good idea to catch up later). Let’s have a look at the fifth element of creativity: Capture.
Here’s a picture of a butterfly (image by mk*). I’ve printed it on a shiny paper, and I must admit it looks great.
So here’s a question for you: would you say my printer is an artist?
…I’m sorry, that was a ridiculous question. Obviously, even though my printer made a beautiful physical thing, it can’t be considered an artist.
Is it just because it’s not a person? Suppose it was a person printing the image, copying it pixel by pixel with markers. Would you call this person an artist? I would argue that the answer is again no. That’s because simply creating something is not what creativity is all about.
What creativity IS all about
A flesh-and-blood artist would look at the picture and think – THIS is what I think this is; and he would paint that thought (which might look something like the quick sketch below). Then he would think: I also see THIS. And then THAT. And then another thing. Each thought becomes a few brushstrokes, and this process of converting observations to paint would go on until the artist is satisfied with the way the work represents his (or her) perception of the image.
The same process happens when writing a story, to take another example. Just as paintings aren’t created as a sequence of pixels, stories aren’t written as a sequence of words. The writer asks – what’s my story about? He converts his answer to words as he writes his rough layout. Then he starts shaping it, making observations about his characters and plot and converting them to more words, until he’s satisfied with the result.
You see, it’s the PROCESS of art that makes it so wonderful and important. Every piece of creative work is a structure made of many little thoughts, each thought captured in a concrete medium: clay, paint, words, music notes, polygons, whatever. In essence, capturing is what art is all about.
The Creative Atom
Forming observations and capturing them is a skill – in fact, I see it as THE fundamental skill of creativity; and that’s why it has its own color and tab in CreativityWise. The better and faster you get at capturing, the stronger and more vivid your artwork will get. Even a small improvement is going to make a huge difference, because what you’re improving is the very building blocks of your art: the creative atom.
It’s the #PROCESS of art that makes it so wonderful and important. @creativitywise click to tweet