The Creative Identity

Try This

I start with research and from there I build the muse, the idea, tell a story and develop a character, a look and then a collection. –John Galliano– Ah yes, who hasn't done this? I took the above from the book I mentioned on Wednesday. When I read that sentence, I found that, for all of its complexities and peculiarities, the creative process of a visual person can be quite similar to the one of the wordsmith. I discussed this in one workshop I ran last year. We went off on a tangent and decided to create two scrapbook-like pages about one specific character that had been sat at the back of our minds for a while. This is something I've done for many years and I still enjoy it; it takes the thinking about words out of the proverbial box. You should definitely try this: build the muse, the idea, the look of your character in two pages only. Use images, scraps, items, colours, fabric, trinkets... Read more →

Fashion Designers' Sketchbooks

A couple of weeks ago I settled down with British Vogue fresh off the letterbox. I really do think that British Vogue is the best English-speaking Vogue there is by many miles, but I cannot say to be that enthralled by Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham occasionally gracing its covers. I think they are two chavs who epitomise all that is crass with society but, of course, I do read every single line of Vogue, hence I also came across Posh Spice's interview. In it she proclaims, 'Look, I don't draw, but nor do lots of designers.' Gosh, don't they really? Or was she referring to the 'designers' who rapidly copy what's marching down the catwalk so that cheapish versions appear on the high street a mere six weeks later, in Zara and Marks and Spencer? I thought that Posh epitomised the transliteration of the adage a little knowledge is a dangerous thing when she spewed that she doesn't read books, only magazines. I guess the crux is there and then dear reader: if you only read magazines how would you possibly know that designers are very often illustrators (Lagerfeld, for example) and very accomplished artists whose drawings are legendary (McQueen, Manolo, Dior)? It so just happens that yesterday I was dragging my heels in my local library and spotted one of those stellar books one could use as voyeuristic entertainment and/or immense inspiration. Fashion Designers' Sketchbooks, compiled by Hywel Davies, is a fabulous book if you're interested in illustration,... Read more →

The Magic Hour

Chicago from The Drake at magic hour Photographers call it the golden hour. Cinematographers tend to use magic hour. Me? I definitely go for magic because I like the sense of alchemy that it suggests. The magic hour is sunup and sundown, when, for an hour or so, light is so mellow that any subject is likely to look great in a picture. I never really knew of this until I showed some shots of Chicago to a photographer friend of mine. When he explained that many photographers like to hit the road early in the morning and late in the afternoon in search of subjects to shoot when the light is so perfect for them, I started thinking that it would be great if there were a window of opportunity for each writer to sit down and write really well within two definite points in time, every day. And if you didn’t want to write at all, fine, but imagine the sense of deliverance in knowing that at time x you are at your best writing self? Blimey. I was over-salivating already. A few months later, finally off my full-time job, I sat at the table in my study early one morning, thrilled at the prospect that I could start writing before 9 am and that the day was stretching ahead of me without interruptions. The day after would be the same, and so on and on until PhD submission and maybe later if I was lucky. Quite rapidly... Read more →

Intermission

Write What's Right – Part I

I’ve been sitting here, writing about ideas and writing, for approximately three hours, or whatever was left of it after I fed the dogs and myself, after the making of the bed, the vacuuming, the general tidying up and pointless stuff I do every morning. I got up super-late, after a ten-hour sleep (know how they say that you need less sleep as you age? Not me) and sat down absolutely determined to tackle the problem of ideas; ideas we follow up, ideas we don’t follow up, ideas that one minute are so great and two ticks later are about as appealing as Christmas in July. In this fantastic piece about ideas, our resistance and our inability to accept that the ones we bin, or forget about, are as valuable to the process as the ones we work on, I was also talking about the courage one needs when some dreadful steps become necessary. Scrapping PhD theses. Abandoning websites that are flying high. Cutting down on writing time in pursuit of something deemed less difficult and less fraught with uncertainty, emotional and otherwise. But today I cannot quite express myself in the way I like to, with an overall vision at the desk before I sit down with it, with an end game always in sight and with a focus on where I am and where I am going. I suspect I know what the issue (or non-issue) is; I’ve done all I set out to do before Christmas and... Read more →