Cross Process Creative
I blend the imaginative with the analytical to create experiences that communicate.
Creative Cross-Training
Why I think painting makes me a better designer and designing makes me a better painter
But fine art is a method of communication just like design is. The joy of both is in the sharing – in the actual communicating. If you attune your eye to the spacing between letters are you no longer attuned to the width of a brushstroke? If you train yourself with a color wheel and digital dropper, does that lessen your ability to mix the right pigments with the right amount of oil and arrive at the perfect paint color? I say it does the opposite.
It's cross-training.
When I have a creative project to work on, I don't switch my brain out of art mode and into design mode. I leave my brain on create mode. I use the imagery differently but I still access the same flow of ideas.
I recently made a painting for a very dear friend. It was a rendition of his daughter's first drawing – crayons on paper at a restaurant table. I loved the irony of making an abstract painting based on a kid's drawing, since people love to say "my kid could've made that" about paintings that aren't based on physical forms. Part of the challenge in making abstract art in the first place is to get in touch with the place of pure creation that children naturally inhabit. So, "my kid could've made that" isn't actually an insult.
To tackle the challenge of making a painting I would actually enjoy looking at, while capturing the movement and color of a scribble drawing, I drew on my training as a designer.
I usually paint to please myself – only. I let the process unfold and don't try to control it very much. I add color solely by intuition and at some point, when I like it the most, it's done.
Making a painting from someone else's drawing was very different. I had to contend with an established color palette and composition, gestures that weren't mine and a vision that already had one interpretation. On the fourth canvas I figured out it was a design problem and I had to tackle it in a methodical way. Instead of copying the drawing, trying to emulate the strokes and essentially pretending the canvas was paper and my brushes were wax sticks, I had to hook into the essence of what the drawing was communicating in the first place, then communicate that in my own way. It isn't ever colors or words or fonts were trying to get across – it's essence.
Once I let myself connect authentically to essence and to my medium, the painting took shape. It became a Margot drawing and an Aubrey painting at the same time.
I imagined I was in the same scene as Margot when she was making the drawing, seeing what she saw, whether in her mind or in real life and then I set about capturing the same energy and color but with brushes instead of crayons. I thought about which lines were the most impacting to me, the energy of the shapes more than the exact lines, and the fluidity of the medium of paint vs crayon.
Art isn't as free as it's made out to be and design isn't as limited. Making paintings you still have to contend with very real limitations – like stretched fabric over a frame, the chemistry of paint, dust and drying time. The arrangement of color on the canvas is more subjective but it has constraints as well. "Does it communicate?" is still a question to wrestle with, even if the artist is the only one who decides. Likewise, design often achieves creative solutions that art never could have, because it usually involves more than one opinion and it has to connect with a certain audience.
Each creative practice we endeavor to participate in enhances the communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, leading to more creativity. So whether it's painting and design or pottery and landscaping, creating, leads to more creativity.