Creative

Ever since I was a little boy, I have loved to draw and render objects, landscapes, buildings, still lifes, and any other object I find interesting – back then I used crayons, now I prefer Winsor and Newton watercolor and my Series 7 Kolinksy sable brushes. Throw in a Faber-Castel pencil or two, and I’m set for self-entertainment. And my motivation to draw comes from (1.) enjoying the setting, typically outdoors to paint in and of, (2.) studying the subject matter and testing color theory and brush/line strokes, (3.) my interest in balance, composition, form, and aesthetics, (4.) having a final product, and (5.) sharing my work and interests with other people. But I need to state this too: apart from a photograph, it’s impossible to identically recapture (which I wouldn’t want to do anyway) the subject. So, a fair amount of challenge in creatively rendering the subject in a style comfortable to me is the only other way I see fit to record this information “accurately” on paper/canvas/wood.

Following my interests above, it is natural for me to “fall in love” with art, its production, history, and market. Combined with my business venture ambitions, advertising has proven to be a comfortable career path for me. And within this broad advertising field, creative advertising connects with me best.

And to consider it further, my five points above correlate in some respect to the role of a creative advertiser. The advertiser must immerse himself in the product/service to be advertised, study it, apply art principles to visual representations, produce hard and soft materials to represent, and finally, share it with a market.

I have sometimes considered what other areas of study I would pursue if I didn’t have my art…and I really can’t imagine life without it. I am interested in anthropology, history, business, and economics, but my excitement would burn at a lower level with these studies.

I’m an artist and want to apply my artistic knowledge about art history, form, color, layout, aesthetics and so on to market-practical endeavors.

After reading, and only further instilling my need to pursue creative adverting, the chapter in the text on Creativity, I found a couple things of high interest: “how to be interesting.” Like everyone else, I want to be interesting. I didn’t think it was possible to list steps to attain/enhance this character trait. 1. Take a picture daily, 2. Start a blog, 3. Keep a scrapbook, 4. Interview someone for 20 minutes once a month, 5. Read a magazine you’ve never read before, 6. Collect something, 7. Sit in a coffee-shop or café and listen to other people’s conversations, 8. Write 50 words about one piece of visual art, writing, music, and film, 9. Make something, 10. Read.

Awesome. It’s now a new year’s resolution.

Staying interesting MUST be essential to the job description. I can’t imagine a dull creative advertiser. These steps and suggestions are beneficial to anyone entering the career. They simply aim to keep us up-to-beat on our surroundings so that we have a treasure chest full of culture and history from which to pull and apply ideas.