breathing in: finding inspiration

Our Creative Call study meets this evening; we'll be reviewing Chapter 5, "Breathing In." In this chapter author Janice Elsheimer covers the subject of inspiration and the Holy Spirit as the source of that inspiration.

I wanted to expand on a thought she puts under the heading "The Courage to Create... This week, try to focus on two main ideas:

1. paying attention
2. making time to breathe in the inspiration God offers you"

A good tool to help you get into the paying attention mode is to sit down with an observational checklist, which I use when I teach about art journaling with students. Inside the front or back cover of your sketchbook/journal, write down this list, then refer to it when you feel you must be missing something. Remember to listen as well as to look, sometimes we visual artists can forget to listen...

1. date
2. time
3. location
4. weather - include wind direction, cloud formations, the forecast for the day
5. first impressions
6. ground observations - really get down there & see what there, especially interesting if you're outside
7. eye-level observations - what is there just at your eye level?
8. overhead observations - spend some time looking up, we often ignore what's over our heads
9. whole landscape observations

This is something I do myself as an integral part of my creative process, I find it helps me focus on my work and what I'm seeing. It also gives me something to reflect back on during later parts of the creative process. (I've adapted this list from another great book, "Keeping a Nature Journal.")

Want to read what's on those journal pages? Just click on the image to see it enlarged!