Wednesday, February 19, 2014

New creative project: the final product

In January I showed you a practical way to organize the first stages of a new creative process with a calendar and sticky notes. Here´s the next step.

I was working on a year long photography prompts project. I wanted to see the whole twelve months at a glance to be able to balance the prompts and see there were no repetitions.
At this point I considered different approaches: random prompts vs. themed prompts was no contest. I´m soooooo structured that themes pleased me more than random prompts thrown at the pages.
Next: themes by month? It had charm but with an international group of participants we didn´t have the same national days and events. Not even the same seasons! Btw: the first original "Life on the Go" group that I started for Art Every Day Month in November liked it so much that it is still alive! That group is now closed to new members, but you can still participate following the prompts on my Paula - Buenos Aires page.

Ok, so groups of 12 related prompts, on the same day each month. The first creative part was over. On to the nitty gritty.
Write, write, write, think, ask, have tea, brainstorm, write some more.

Once I got all the 30 groups of 12 prompts they still looked a bit all over the place. And I had this idea. Divide the themes into bigger themes. In this case: personal, home, outdoors and classic prompts (verbs, descriptions, songs, events, that kind). Write one theme on each colour coded sticky note and put the colours together.
As it is a very personal voyage of self discovery I started each month with the personal prompts, followed by the home and finally going out into the big world.

Time to write each prompt where needed. Take the first group and put one on each month, following the theme flow. Same with the second and on until the 31st (shorter as not all months have 31 days).

The last step is to write it all on a Word document and ask my kids to teach me how to make a PDF out of it so I can share it with you!



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8 comments:

misteejay said...

Very organised Paula. Enjoy your lesson with the kids on PDFs.

Toni xx

Kim Nishida said...

I love the way your brain thinks and organizes things, especially in themes and colors! I'm sure your kids know how to do this, but just in case they're not around, here's a quick how-to re: converting to pdfs: http://www.howtodoitnow.com/how-to-save-your-word-document-as-a-pdf-for-free/

Cheers!

Katrina said...

Being organized is a must. Love the sticky note picture.
I agree that beginning with personal and then moving to bigger picture is a great way to structure.

Thank you for sharing.

Susan Evans said...

I used to brainstorm ideas all the time, and there is joy in creating the original ideas that come from brainstorming. I like how you have writing prompts for each day.

Bonnie Gean said...

It sounds like you're having so much fun even though it also looks like tons of work! LOL

I can't wait to see how it all looks once you create a PDF file!

Karen said...

I'm impressed, I love seeing organising like this.

Paula - Buenos Aires said...

Thanks Toni! I´m also looking at prettifying software. :D

Thank youuuuuuu Kim! Such clear instructions! Going to Like your page so I can follow your work. :)

The sticky note picture is soooooo me Katrina. :D That is the visual of how my brain works.

Susan, I made a point of not looking at other 365 projects until I finished mine. There are some very popular ones and I didn´t want that to influence mine. :)

It was a ton of work Bonnie but it didn´t feel like it.

Thanks Karen. I love the structured part with a touch of creativity of organizing.

Elena said...

It's always nice to meet another list maker. Is there anything better than scratching stuff off your list!! Love what I've seen so far. Can't wait to return to look around some more.

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