Final Major Project | Week One : Planning

I began preparation for my Final Major Project by reflecting on my work and what I have learned about my practice since the course began in September.

My intention at the beginning of the Access course was to pivot my career post-redundancy by training as a Graphic Designer; and to develop a portfolio in illustration with a view to applying for a Masters in Children’s Book Illustration at Goldsmith’s.

I now feel these aren’t the right pathways for me, and the Final Major Project seems like a good opportunity to try and gain some clarity about what next steps to take. I want to turn my experience as a brand manager and creative coach inwards: after a career of supporting others in their creativity, to explore what emerges when I have permission to be creative for myself.

I overcome the intimidation of the blank page by working on scrap paper: A4 folded to a booklet, to capture my thoughts on the bus to college. I like the rhythm of giving my ideas a narrative in this way. Brainstorming opened my thinking wider; and I revisited my Creative Coaching framework. It felt too formal and corporate for my purposes here, so I also sought artists and art therapists for inspiration.

Artist Helen Wells shares her ‘Expressive Sketchbook’ practice of taking inspiration for shapes from the natural world, and exploring abstract patterns and colours in her beautiful sketchbook pages. I was inspired to work from my extensive collection of photographs (which I already have in themed albums: sea, trees, sky etc . . .), freeing myself from observational/representational drawing and instead capturing shapes which I then ‘coloured in’ without reference to the original; simply applying colours in combinations that felt right.

I filled several pages in this way; some I like more than others ― but the objective is to draw without judgement, simply to be in the process. This runs slightly counter to the brief for this blog but my aim is to dismantle the perfectionist blocks I put up in the way of my creative output . . .

Another process I find effective as a creative activity that comes without pressure to make something ‘good’ is hand-stitching my pages together, however scrappy. And as I stitched my booklet created during a class exercise to describe an imaginary animal, I found this little soft red pompom in my sewing kit that seemed just the right way to fill the next blank page!

Translating my illegible scribble into elegant design also helps me take an objective view. I applied lessons from readymag.com’s design almanac to set up my digital sketchbook for the FMP in Keynote, and scoped out six weeks of self-coaching with creative exercises. Working through Spring Break will allow an additional two weeks for production of an outcome/exhibit, if I need it.

Week One ~ Reflect : Consider your past practice and review the work you have done to this point. 

I revisited a series of three booklets I had almost forgotten creating ― ‘Find Your Way’, ‘The Little Things that Help’ and ‘Chakras’, along with articles in Creativity and Mental Illness, edited by James C. Kaufman for Cambridge University Press.

My first ‘therapeutic’ creative exercise was to make a stress ball (inspired by Erica Pang Art): scribbling out my anxieties and potential barriers to the FMP, colouring them in, scrunching them up and carrying them home squeezed in my palm on the bus . . . My initial intention was to throw the ball away, but I think I like it enough to stick it in my sketchbook: Perhaps I will follow Lee Krasner’s example and use the scraps for collage . . .