Welcoming Limits
Sometimes people think that creativity is about dreams and never-ending streams of ideas. But most creative people know that limits are incredibly important for the creative work process. Too many options overwhelms the system. Making decisions from too large a pool of choices deadens the senses.
What are some ways to use limitations to help your creative insights?
Photographers often welcome limits by using a single fixed lens or focal length. 50mm -- out you go for the day. If there is an intriguing image, you must walk closer or farther away rather than zooming in from the original spot in which you stopped. You might slow down and walk around a bit more, thinking carefully about what you are seeing. Other limits use time, by choosing an object or scene and spending an entire hour -- or entire day! -- shooting just that one item. Exploring it, using different aperture and shutter speed combinations, changing the angle, watching the light and capturing it at different hours of the day.
Dancers seek out “choreographic provocations” -- small and specific frames for a new set of dance steps. Will the frame limit the number of people or type of people? Will it define a space on the dance floor in which you must move? It’s a mini-assignment to do in a small chunk of time. Each small activity can then build on the one before and multiple layers of small and specific frames can later be integrated into a larger work. The key is the first step.
Drawers sometimes engage in an exercise called blind contour drawing, never letting their eyes stray to the paper and sometimes not even lifting the pencil one single time. Contours are the outer edges of a drawing, and an artist sketching is training his or her observational skills, rather than producing a high-level drawing. It reminds me of, as a pianist, being taught not to look at the keys but to sit up straight and trust that my fingers knew where they were going and what they were doing. Of course, a piano key just goes down and up so the only possible thing that can go wrong is getting your hands in the wrong place! Though for a drawer, the inability to look at the page leads to a less-than-lifelike reproduction, the drawer continues to look, focus on the subject and not rely on short-term memory. They may see new shadows or parts of the subject by never removing their gaze.
Visual artists may opt to use a limited palette. By choosing only a few colors -- and often the most basic colors -- a painter mixes and notices, watching hues and saturation levels, and learns how to work with the color palette options in front of him, her or them. Limiting it even more to a monochrome palette -- only black and white -- means lines and shadows are the focus, avoiding the color theme entirely. Photographers who choose between black and white and color often ask themselves if color is the point of the image. If not, they use a monochrome setting for a dramatic effect; painters can mimic this.
What would it be like to plan, create, execute, and complete all in one day? Playing around with limits of time also alters our relationship with our art. If you are used to returning to your work, doing draft after draft, or won’t let go of a painting until you get that one bit just right, a one-day-only exercise releases new energy. No perfection allowed, letting the muse speak straight from the heart -- presenting, regardless of the errors. Strong and powerful lessons.