Creativity begets Creativity – So Get Small for Erfahrung

In the art production game, continuous practice and improvement is essential to growth, particularly if you’re looking for rapid growth. Along comes Robert Genn of The Painter's Keys, "We're all familiar with the problems associated with Sunday Painters. Cranking up the old machine once a week may be okay in the vintage car hobby--but it's bad news in the creativity game. The steady worker who applies his craft daily is more likely to make creative gains than an intermittent one."

If this “law” of creativity weren’t true we could all just recline by the pool for four days a week and go to work on Friday and complete our responsibilities with a great blast of productivity. But life doesn’t work that way and trying to work against the natural law of creativity would make as much sense as passing a resolution to skip winter. While we’re at it, why don’t we just make life easier for all those scientists and just round off pi to the next whole number?

Unfortunately, practicing our craft daily can be quite a challenge. Real life intervenes for so many of us. I think for those who are serious about making strides in their art (which probably includes everyone reading this newsletter), the old adage is true, “Practice makes perfect.” The good news is that a little bit of practice will go a long way. If you're currently a weekend warrior, find ways to hone your craft at least A LITTLE BIT during the week. Perhaps it's just a sketch pad during your lunch hour...perhaps just a 30 minute study. Creativity begets more creativity so it's critical to keep your mind in the “zone.”

In painting, experience can be looked upon as a function of the number of paintings an artist has created. In effect, the more paintings you’ve done, the more experienced you are. Kevin Macpherson recommends working small as a way to gain experience rapidly. He writes in his book, Fill You Oil Paintings with Light and Color, “When you step up to a small canvas to try something new every day rather than working and reworking a large painting for weeks, you see progress. You learn to master techniques such as brushwork and texture, which boosts your confidence. Painting on a small scale also forces you to ignore inconsequential details and look for larger shapes, broader color relationships and overall composition. It gives you the ability to look at a scene as a whole.” He further recommends committing to paint 100 small paintings as a means to rapid growth.

Fill You Oil Paintings with Light and Color by Kevin Macpherson:
http://www.kevinmacpherson.com

When you get in the creative “zone” more often, you strengthen the neural pathways that allow you to be creative, thus making it easier to be even MORE creative. It’s sort of like developing a habit to be creative.

Nietzsche identified two different kinds of knowledge. On the one hand you have the things you know from personal experiences and from personal observation, which he called “erfahrung.” There are also the abstractions you think you know - the kinds of things that you read about in art books and from viewing the works of others - which he called "wissen."

Although wissen teaches us ideas in the intellectual realm, experience based knowledge; erfahrung catapults us up the growth curve so much faster. Trying to become a better painter through wissen alone would be like spending your Sunday watching home improvement television instead of just fixing that leaking faucet.

Now that I’ve given you a bit of wissen on the subject, get out there and get some erahrung! And don’t forget to get small.

That’s my view, post a comment to send me yours.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson
Software Craftsman and Art Fanatic

PS: "No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access." (Friedrich Nietzsche)