This article is the second one in the Vision series. Like I mentioned in my previous article that the Vision series is my attempt to create my life’s vision in form of an inspiration board for each domain of my life, which I can always refer to while moving forward in my life.
Initially, I started off by assigning each month with a life’s domain. Which looked kind of like this:
- January: Environment/Surrounding
- February: Love
- March: Adventure
- April: Creativity
- May: Intellect
- June: Health & Fitness
- July: Skill
- August: Friendship
- September: Career
- October: Family
- November: Community
- December: Spirituality
You can either follow this order or create your own.
But what to do after you’ve assigned the months with a specific domain, what is it that I’m trying to achieve here? I bet this thought might have crossed your mind.
Which is a valid question, I mean what good would this whole exercise bring? Creating an inspiration board for each domain, just like Pinterest? Isn't it just a hollow exercise? No, it’s not. We, as an entity, are the average of all the people we’ve been with, TV shows and movies we have watched, books we’ve read, music we’ve heard, and the places we’ve been. It’s an ever-evolving process. Any single attribute of ours might not be unique, but once we combine many different attributes as one, is we get a unique personality.
One of my all-time favorite books is Steal Like An Artist, it’s not just because being an artist, I automatically liked this book. But rather it’s because of the genuine process given in the book, that enables us to create unique/original artwork.
I highly recommend everyone to read this book( it’s really short!)
You can download the e-book from here
Some of my favorite lines from the book are as follows:
Originality is just undetected plagiarism
If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever, but if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will call you original
Steal from anywhere that resonates with you or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, random conversations, architecture, clouds, water bodies, light, and shadow. Select things to steal from that directly speak to your soul
I’ll try to explain this process of documenting vision from an artist’s perspective. Here’s how it goes
1. Identify and Define the Concept
Before I start creating any artwork, I’d definitely require a topic, an idea around which I’ll compose my art. Sometimes, you are clueless, and it’s hard to decide on a topic. But luckily, we have one defined for this month, and that’s Love.
Once you know your topic, you need to define what it means to you, as there can be multiple interpretations of any topic. The key is to go with your gut feeling, don’t think about what’s the most acceptable interpretation of that topic, but rather what resonates with you the most.
As for me, after giving it some thought, the most rational interpretation of love would be as follows:
Love is a function of acceptance and appreciation. You can’t love something/someone without accepting it/them for what it is/who they are, and then you add the level of appreciation. The higher is your appreciation index, the stronger your love will be.
So now, once I have concluded my interpretation in a statement, the next goal will be to frame it in form of a question. Since it’s obvious that you can’t make anyone else accept/appreciate you every time. Because they are things that are not in your control, and if you constantly rely on the actions of others to achieve something, then you’re bound to fail.
Hence, my goals should be something that is completely dependent on my actions. And based on my interpretation of love, the only two goals I have in my mind are:
- How do I start accepting things/people for exactly what/who they are?
- How do I increase my appreciation index for it/them?
So, now, we have a clear understanding of our topic, and what elements are we considering to create our artwork. And that brings us to the next step.
2. Finding Inspiration
Despite having a clear idea about what you want to draw, you might still find it hard to proceed, because of not being able to figure out the best possible way to showcase your art( What style should you choose? Which mediums can be used? Or How should the composition look like?)
And that’s why we look for inspiration, just like we store multiple pins on Pinterest, related to the desired topic. Even having multiple inspirations to choose from there can be two possible ways to create your final artwork
- Imitation
- Originality
Imitation is something we use when we decide to recreate an inspiration, in the exact same way. Like out of the 5 artwork inspirations you like one the most and decide to copy it. And there’s nothing wrong with it. To be honest, imitation is the first step towards originality.
When you try to imitate something exactly, you are able to figure out what things work for you and what doesn’t.
Once you’ve gone through multiple imitation runs, you will be able to try originality.
Originality is all about taking parts of multiple inspirations and combine them as one. Just like you decide to take a color scheme from one artwork, medium from another, composition from yet another, and when you try to combine them, you have created something that didn’t exist before!
That’s the exact concept you will use to find inspirations that matches with your interpretation of love.
The idea is to keep things minimal and follow the Magical number,7 plus minus 2 rule. That means in order to reduce the cognitive loads, keep your inspiration source limited to the range of [5,9].
I decided to make things even simpler by taking inspiration only from :
- A movie that resonates with me the most
- A famous personality ever lived
- An anime that resonates with me the most
you can either choose these sources for inspiration or go for something else, like a book, music, or a poem.
And these are my inspirations for the theme of Love
1. Accepting things gracefully, even if they challenge your beliefs
“I think the best thing we can do is to let people know that each one of them is precious”
For me, ‘A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’ is one of those movies that offers a different but realistic insight about love and being human. It shows us about the power that we, as an individual, possess to create a loving and caring environment. That’s how Mr. ROGERS has lived his life, by focusing on the essence of ACCEPTANCE, APPRECIATION, & FORGIVENESS.
By showing how we can change our reflex from anger to love, whenever our belief is threatened.
2. Learning to appreciate even the little things
“We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents”
Some people are just too good for the world, and Bob Ross is most definitely one of them. To be able to love and bring joy to almost everyone was his superpower. I love how he used the power of art and tried his best to convince others to do things they find most difficult to do.
3. Not forgetting about the people we care about
Kimi no nawa is one of my all-time favorites, apart from the astounding visuals, and a heartwarming soundtrack, the story is really amazing! I don’t know why am I obsessed with the concept of time and space.
It’s a beautiful story about how even time and space can’t force you to forget someone you care about.
Lastly, it’s up to you, as in what approach will you take will incorporating these inspirations in the canvas of your life, will it be the imitation method or the originality method.
If your vision doesn’t change with the passage of time, it will further strengthen your way of living. And if it does change, well, you can always find a new inspiration to look from. And it will indicate that you are evolving further.
If you like the concept don’t forget to hit the clap button :)
Image source: Neofigurati