My friends and I were laughing last night about t-shirt slogans and tossed a few around including the first one featured below. I know that one would run into copyright issues if I tried to make it for real but it was fun to design.
Sometimes I think that as Christians we take ourselves too seriously here’s a few slogans that laugh at us a little and would maybe make great t-shirt designs.
i was looking at my vast collection of quotes the other day – sometimes i love to just read them and ponder them, sometimes i look to them for inspiration and sometimes like today they are the inspiration. here’s a few quotes on writing and creativity to get you thinking.
“you never know what you will learn ‘til you start writing. then you discover truths you never knew existed.” – anita brookner
“let your mind alone and see what happens”. – virgil thomson
“to me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make”. truman capote
‘writing is my refuge. it’s where i go. it’s where i find that integrity i have.’ – charles. b. johnson
“the best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” – agatha christie
‘writing is the only thing that when i do it, i don’t feel i should be doing something else” – gloria steinem
“the creative power cannot be repressed, one must give vent to what one feels”. – vincent van gogh
“life is not long for anybody and the problem is only to make something of it.” – vincent van gogh
“it is a pity that as one gradually gains experience, one gradually loses ones youth”. – vincent van gogh
“you should be writing something from your life, from the depths of your soul. there is more in you than this,” he said, “if you have the courage to hear it.” – louisa may alcott – from the film adaptation of little women
“humanity is in your tears. “no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” – robert frost
one thing that fascinates me is where people get their inspiration from. i have to confess a lot of my inspiration comes from playing and experimenting or pieces i see somewhere and i think “i could do that but what if i tweaked it here or did this to it, i wonder what that would look like?” and then the creative urge takes over and before you know it the everyday world is forgotten and i am lost in the world of my own creating. of course my works rarely end up as i see them in my mind, somewhere along the way something happens that leads me off on a discovery trail and before you know it i am a thousand miles away from where i started in my mind.
i suspect a lot of other artists and writers are like me too. it doesn’t help that my strongest strength according to tom raths “strengthsfinder” is adaptability. maybe because of that i am doomed to forever wander the trails of “what if” and “oh let’s try”. i find that while adaptability is my greatest strength it can also be a great weakness as many half finished projects can attest to; but that is my inspirational trail as i have walked it. luckily the results are usually something pleasing at least to me and most things do get finished. i have got better at that over the years.
this post started when i was browsing www.thisiscolossal.com and came across some exquisite paintings by a taipei-based painter Peihang Huang. Huang uses oils to create dreamy barbie doll inspired paintings. it’s amazing what sparks our creativity – i know for me barbie dolls only inspire the idea of “barbieques” (maybe because of the word play there) not beautiful paintings – i have truly wondred what they would look like half melted and what shapes they would take on! a lamp made of half melted barbies and other toys is still somewhere in my future.
it seems for Huang too that idea of barbie dolls dying isnpired some of the works in the two series i saw – floral funeral and mad world. you’d think that the idea of death would spark something dark and morbid yet her works are full of vibrant life and beauty. you can see more of her work on Flickr.
check out these other sites too that have barbie as their inspiration becauseimaddicted.net/2012/01/barbie-tributes-to-famous-works-of-art.html www.whatthecool.com/post/3485347496/fine-art-barbie/ www.alteredbarbie.com/artwork/exhibition
inspiration strikes us all in different ways and we wander those inspiration trails in our minds usually for a while before our thoughts coalesce and become reality. how different each mind works as it takes the inspiration and begins the creative process. for me that is one of the things i love most about mankind – their creativity that is so varied and vast. i never get tired of marvelling over peoples creativity.
mycreativefire 