GETTING IT DOWN, SORTING IT OUT: Applying Peter Gabriel’s Beautiful Insights to my Passion Project.

 Who is your longest-running musical hero? Someone you loved in high school or college who still has major real estate in your playlists or on your trendy turntable…

The ever-evolving, recently retired British progressive rock group Genesis have been my musical darlings since I was around 15 and I owe Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett et al a debt of inspirational and emotional gratitude that can never even be expressed.

Forty years on and still a chord progression here, a lyric there, pops up regularly and colours my day.

Gabriel’s recent solo release “io” is that rare thing- an aging star willing to embrace the lessons and lesions of time and able to weave them into Art of astonishing beauty and vulnerability. The honesty alone is flooring to me.

A favourite track, Playing For Time, has helped me wade through a mire of uncontrollable burdens this year and remember how, at the center of the storm, there is still the peace and absolute “preciousness” of our fundamental human treasures: 

Family

Memory

Mother Earth

Mortality

Eternity

Love

So here my summer has been- in between the moments that come and go..

“Getting it down, sorting it out so everything I care about is held in here, all of those I love, inside…”

The placing of one bruised foot in front of another day by day is as good as a mighty leap in such times. So I won’t be beating myself up for the posting gap. Just sharing a few of my snatched moments of skill-building and record-keeping. Not on shiny vinyl discs but scattered across my Procreate account and keenly etched on my heart.

Inklings 4-25 The Workmanship of the Hands of Us

 My realtime notes from this morning's stirring, encouraging discussion ❤❤❤

🧁🧁🧁

What the Heck is a Sketchnote Anyway?

 Have you ever despaired of sending your spouse or kid to the store, knowing they will take an hour then come back with half the wrong stuff and half forgotten along the way?
I have seen hilarious efforts to avoid this common problem, and some pretty ingenious ones involving pictures or photos of said products too.

Why?
Well, obviously because the image does all the talking you really need.

This is at least part of what a good sketchnote does. It literally shows meaning, clarifies the message and saves a lot of confusion and angst.

The term "sketchnote" was coined by visual thinker Mike Rohde- it's just one way of naming this kind of combo of text, lettering, icons, diagrams and images. A rich mix of familiar visuals that light up numerous areas of the brain as well as often proving interesting or even downright entertaining.

I love a bit of humor in my visual notes too. Few things aid recall like the amusing and the absurd.
Hence my recent video introducing the wonders of the sketchnote includes sexy boots... but a trail of toilet paper unfortunately stuck to them too. Now you know what a sketchnote can contain in terms of content, but I bet you will have a hard time forgetting they are attractive and "sticky" too.

And maybe you will also remember you need toilet rolls next time you're at the store.😊💡👍

BOOK GROOVE- How I Want to Remember Rick Rubin's Epic - THE CREATIVE ACT

 So my month of living and breathing Rick Rubin's remarkable book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being has come to an end- and what a journey it has been.

It's a tough one, despite the very manageable "bite-sized" chapters, because it's really one of those carefully crafted works where almost every sentence is a profound treasure. I mean to say, if you are the meditating kind, you could crack this 400+ page tome open at any page and find content to muse over for days!

So, how do you summarize such a work?

Ultimately, I felt I just couldn't do it justice, unless I had an entire wall of space to work with.

So I followed some of the wisdom I learned from the author himself, opened up my heart and mind to other possible ways to express my reaction creatively, and let my childlike excitement take the reigns.

The result was more energetic, more colorful than anything I have ever attempted before!
One recurring image in Rubin's teachings is the idea as the creative as a kind of VESSEL. This was my starting point- a very simple water carafe. Then I wanted to represent the many discussions of FLOW he evokes- from outside being received, and emanating from the creative back out into the world.        

(I believe the fact that I had just recently finished watching nearly eight hours of Peter Jacksons Beatles: Get Back documentaries may also have influenced the style that emerged *nods to Peter Max*.)

I eventually changed the purpose of my sketch, wanting to keep some of the most powerful ideas as reminders for my future creative endeavors, as well as ensuring a visual punch that says FREEDOM, PLAYFULNESS and GROOVY GURU GOODNESS. I also decided to create a small poster of the finished sketch and send it with thanks to the delightful bookshop keeper who sold me the book in Hailey, Idaho last summer.

I'm not a hundred percent sold on the bubbles' colors. I keep trying different options. Below are 3 iterations- my aim is to keep the crazy energy of the content, whilst avoiding total visual overwhelm and inviting the viewer to lean in and look a little more carefully in order to find all the "nuggets" of wisdom. (You are cordially invited to a little game of spot the differences below😍).

I love that generally, in sketchnoting, less is much more.
But just this once, it was a blast to let go and let enthusiastic gushing rule the day.

Creative Notes: A Way of Reading

Do you remember the last time you read a book and it truly made a difference in the way you think or act? 

I often read non-fiction which contains great nuggets of wisdom or "aha" moments that really make me feel "I could do that!".

Ten pages, minutes or distractions later, it's all gone.

I really didn't want music producer and creativity guru Rick Rubin's book to end up going the same way.

Honestly, why even take the time to read anything if it fails to create any ripples in my life?!

After much deliberation and trying to feel my way into Mr. Rubin's way of creating art, I developed a unique format for recording my thoughts and learning.

My actionable bookmark booklet was my initial idea.

We shall see where it leads...

“Good With Numbers” ~ Better With Pictures: My Maths Teacher Hero.

 My son- by a miracle of dna wizardry that no-one in our family can fathom- is a mathematics teacher. He is, as they say, “GOOD WITH NUMBERS”.

Lucky for him, and maybe half of his students, he has a mum who is deeply UN-GOOD with numbers, equations, graphs, driving directions, logic…the whole package.

This means, when he was a nipper with math homework to do, we were working it all out with pictures, colour, and many, many stories.

For me personally, the ONLY way I am going to understand the purpose, applications and operations of math, chemistry, coding etc, is if I can process it with a little humanity thrown in. I need PEOPLE in the picture.

And I need pictures in the picture!

I learned this thanks to dear Mr.Jones, a lovable Welshman with a lifetime of math teaching experience and a heart willing to do what was necessary to reach a struggling pupil.

And my gosh, did I struggle!

I had failed my mathematics O level (kind of like Harry Potter’s OWLs exams but without the Weasley twins’ fireworks😊🎆🎇) THREE TIMES, before poor Mr. Jones was landed with me… and began to work his magic.

No wand or floo powder required, Mr.Jones’ magic came from his pen and a scrap of paper. He would teach the class, see my panicked expression and call me over to sit at his desk. Then whilst everyone else got started, he would DRAW the concept for me. I looked at what he drew and would often say “IS THAT IT?!” Train timetables, with stations and bridges; planets sprouting curving arrows; rockets shooting towards planets; I couldn’t begin to remember it all now. 

But I do remember opening my exam results and discovering a B PASSING GRADE. Finally. 🎉🏆🎉

I get quite emotional recalling this, because it was pure luck that I was given a teacher who could and would differentiate in this way. Maybe today, it’s more common for instructors to diversify their methods. I dearly hope so. It took 6 years of high school/college teachers teaching and re-teaching in the same way, before I finally hit the Jones jackpot.

Ironically, without this math pass, I couldn’t have pursued my own vocation in teaching, and learnt how to make my own teaching magic to help kids who shine in subjects outside the 3Rs. Out in the world, there are several fabulous teachers, a few actors, an opera singer, speech therapists, a folk singer,  creative team leads, a cartoonist, an author and a BBC writer and presenter who I was able to help find their power. I dearly hope there are many others out there with a little more self-confidence, creativity and love of theatre, music and those improvisational party games, because Mr. Jones drew me enough visuals to make the impossible possible.

So, that’s why I draw any time I can today. For piano students, church leaders, CBD scientists, psychotherapists, businesswomen with a vision, start-up small businesses, entrepreneurs, and yes, for my math teacher son too.

It’s my way of paying forward Mr. Jones’s priceless gift.

Thank you, sir!

Remembering How to Remember

Don't you love a really succinct, useful quotation?

As soon as I hear a total gem that creates an inexplicable buzz or thrill in my heart I start to panic.

HOW CAN I NOT FORGET THIS ONE?

What better than to access the natural passions of the human brain for patterns and images?

A recent eloquent Christmas sermon I heard touched me in this way. The sheer poetry of the speaker's expressions cried out for something special. This time, rather than going into automatic "Summarize and Clarify" mode, I decided to find a way to capture quotations, the mood and the exotic beauty of the language.

I also wanted to play around with several different fonts. This was positively risque for me as I tend to panic if I need to work with more than two COLOURS, let alone FONTS!!
But heck: it's Christmas. 
So a little reckless funning seemed excusable (perhaps more so than the use coining of the word "funning".LOL.)

And this was the result. 
What do you think of the mix of fonts? 
How effective is it to mix Procreate fonts with handwriting?
Does the overall feel succeed in communicating Peace? Poetry? Awe?

At the very least, it has been an experiment I loved creating.