My Creativity Blog

Welcome back to My Creativity Blog! My goal in writing this blog is to inspire you! Let me know through comments or email how I'm doing. Thanks for visiting! ~Terry

Every single child born into this world comes with a set of talents. Some are gifted with more and some with less. Nevertheless, they are all blessed with one talent or the other. There is never an individual born into the world with no talent whatsoever. Every single person has some talent. So the next step is to identify the talent that the child inherently possesses so that it can be brought out, nurtured, cultivated, developed and used for the good of society as well as the individual. Every talent that every individual possesses is for the common good, and not for the individuals themselves to keep and enjoy. The talent needs to be used for the good of everyone, and in the process, the possessor of the talent would also be blessed.

Therefore, parents and elders in close association with the child have the responsibility of identifying the gifts and talent of the child and bring it out into the open. While with some children, it is extremely easy to identify what particular talent they are gifted with, with other children, it may not be readily apparent. But parents need to strive hard to recognize the talents that their child possesses so that they can develop them even further.

There are various ways to spot a child’s talent. The first task is to expose them to as many fields as possible. When they are babies, we may not have a clue to what they are talented in. So we need to expose them to music, to pictures, to toys of various kinds and to a variety of different stimuli. This exposure will tremendously stimulate their minds during the early stages of mental development. It is crucial that the all the senses of the child are stimulated so that the child has uniform development in all spheres.

Once the seeds are sown, the parents can be ready for the harvest. Sooner or later, the child will start displaying specific attributes based on their unique skills. If they musically inclined, they will be singing and playing instruments. If they are artistically inclined, they might be with their pencils and brushes, drawing or painting things they had seen. At first, these might be very rudimentary. But the parents need to recognize that they are still in their early stages of development. Given time and nurturing, these talents will one day take the child to great heights. It is to that end that every parent needs to invest their time and effort in their child’s gifts.

About the Author
Amy C. enjoys expressing her creativity through the creation and design of calming water features.  She invites you to browse beautiful collection of indoor fountains at the tabletop fountain store.  Amy’s most recent addition features calming slate wall fountain collection at the tabletop fountain store.

Hi! I hope your summer is going well. Mine has been interesting. Not doing exactly what I planned, but that is what keeps things interesting. I want to let you all know that I am going to be taking off from writing for My Creativity Blog for a short while. I am not exactly sure how long. I hope to be back writing in a month. It may be sooner than that.

Some exciting news before I take off is that I will be adding a writer to My Creativity Blog in August. They will write one article a month. I’ll let you know who it is later!!!!

As I was writing this article, I had the sensation that I was writing a letter to an old friend. I hope that you feel the friendship as well. That got me to thinking about how fun it would be to get creative in writing letters to old friends. How often do you get a real hand written letter in the mail? Not often, I bet.

Has letter writing become a thing of the past? I think it has. People do send cards occasionally. But for me getting cards in the mail can be a let down. Why? Because most people just sign their name and don’t write anything personal in the card they send. I have even received Christmas cards with a stamped signature. I usually turn the card up and down looking for some sign that a human has touched it.

So, be a rebel today and write a long newsy creative letter to a friend.

I truly love getting long newsy letters in the mail and I’m sure your friends do too. You can decorate your letter. You can include sketches, pressed flowers, lipstick kisses, and perfume scents in the letter.  You can create your own stationary or paper. You can even make your own envelope. Just remember that if you use an odd size or large size envelope you may have to pay more for postage.

I hope this gets you inspired to send a letter to someone today. If you have no one to send a letter to, send one to me.  I would love it!!!! My address is P.O. Box 90989, Portland, OR 97290.

Take care. Talk to you in a while. There are plenty of articles on this blog to keep you busy until I get back.

Designing or creating the composition of your art work is very important in order to end up with a pleasing result. I have been painting for many years, and I find myself doing much of the composing as I take photographs of the subject matter I want to paint. Sometimes I do not consciously think about it. Other times I find myself deliberately taking photos from many different angles hoping that a good composition will result.

The term “composition” is defined by Dictionary.com in the area of fine art as the organization or grouping of the different parts of a work of art so as to achieve a unified whole. The art text book  ART TALK by Rosalind Ragans defines composition as the way the principles of design are used to organize the elements of art.

This article could get really complicated. So much to discuss. But, that is not my goal. So, what do I want to accomplish? First, I want to give you some examples of photographs. Then, I want to give you some ideas that might be used in changing the arrangement of the subject matter in the picture to create a more pleasing composition.

Here goes:

Photograph One: You can change the design of your work just by getting a little closer to the subject. In this photograph of fall leaves I give you two examples. One is further away with a lot of empty space at the bottom of the picture. You can crop the empty space to create a different look. Using photo editing software can make creating your composition much easier.

Fall Leaves from a Distance

Fall Leaves a Little Closer

Photograph Two: In the following photographs you can a beautiful Oregon stream I photographed in the fall. When you compose your art work think about why you want to paint the scene. Ask yourself what drew you to the subject. For me, I was drawn to the fall colors and the movement of the stream. The first photo captures everything. It is a nice shot but the area in the left foreground is not of interest to me at all. I want to eliminate that area and also play up the curve in the stream. I don’t like the way the water ends almost at the left corner of the picture.

Oregon Stream

So, I cropped the photo a little.  I like this better, but I still want to play up the fall color a little more.

A Little Closer

I cropped some more. I placed the colorful trees in one of the golden areas. Don’t know what a golden area is? Click here. This time the fall color really comes into play. I have completely lost my sky in this photo. So, if you wanted sky you would need to do something else. As I cropped this photo I realized there is a trash can lid or something in the water. So, that would be left out. Something else I might do is play up the boulders in the foreground of the stream. I think when I draw this on my watercolor paper I will draw the ones from the picture above.

Even Closer

Photograph Three: In this photograph the composition is confused by all the extras. We don’t need to have so much of the tractor in the scene. The subject or focus is my grandson, Isaac. Isaac is dead center too. I want to move him over a little one way or the other. Remember, golden areas. I also want to leave enough of the tractor to let the viewer know what he is doing or where he is. There is a metal bar behind Isaac’s head. I would eliminate that in the painting. I probably would eliminate the trees and fence line behind him also. Could make the background out of focus.

Isaac on a Tractor

Better Composition

Well, I hope this article helps. There are so many factors involved in creating a pleasing composition. I will continue to write articles about composition on this blog. I would appreciate it if you would leave me a comment. Have a great week!

But God has revealed it to us by his spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
 
 I Corinthians 2:10 NIV
Thought:
I think every person experiences or sees the world in a slightly different manner from the next. Visual artists might be prone to notice color, texture, value, shape, and line. A musician might be more sensitive [...]

Purple Orchid

Last week I wrote an article about using creativity prompts. If you missed the article you can click here to read it. Yesterday I decided to use the prompts I had written about. The prompts I mentioned were:
orchid
color – purple
texture – rough
emotion – childlike
principle of design – movement
I decided I wanted to do a fast and fun [...]

Sometime in your life you will become interested in your family history. It happened to me when I was in my thirties. I did not know much about my father’s family, so I started doing research.
I found a lot of information through the Clayton Genealogical Library in Houston, talking to family members, going to county courthouses, [...]

When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.
~ George Washington Carver
Thought:
I ran across a bracelet I had been making three years ago. It was stuck in a box with a bunch of jewelry-making supplies, a sort of lost treasure. I remember working on [...]