Watercolor Weekday: Exercising Creativity

I started this blog with the goal of documenting my creative pursuits, artistic activities and design projects outside of my day job as an I.T. Consultant. Since childhood, my love affair with art has never wavered despite the smorgasbord of interests and life events that have come my way during my adult life. There was always this need to create, to play with color, to scribble, doodle and draw, even if they were on scraps of paper, the back of receipts or an artist grade watercolor paper. I've kept notebooks of sketches/doodles and journals for calligraphy, and as a toddler, I also used to draw/paint on walls (to my mother's horror), but that's another story. 

My volunteering week in Bohol in early January

Since I am a huge fan of paper and any surface that you can draw or paint on, my recent victim is a 2014 Starbucks planner that my sister Kat gave me at the start of the year. It was an extra planner that she had no use for and I, being on the receiving end, was happy to have another one of those planners that have a lot of space for doodling and less space for, well, planning. I've kept a bunch of planners before and while they have been useful for jotting down my to do list, most pages were used to document events after the fact, with tons of swirls and shitloads of block lettering.

Baguio doodle

Marker crazy with my Mt. Pulag entry

This year's planner is no different as I've been really enjoying with the daily activity of sprucing up my planner's weekly pages. I've improved with actually using it as a planner as opposed to only using it as a doodle notebook (yay me). Maintaining a planner has helped me in my productivity and in keeping my appointments, making sure that I accomplish what I had set out to do on a particular day. A concrete example is my weekly runs that I carefully indicate on a particular date based on my training plan. I write them in nice big letters, to make sure that I do not back out from my intended target. Mahiya naman ako sa lettering ko, diba? Plus, I get a kick out of ticking off each item on my list when I finish them. 

Since I have a perennial aversion to white space, I make sure to use up some blank pages in my planner to play with watercolor. This painting on the starting page of February was my mindless relaxing doodle when I had a couple of hours to spare on a particular weekend. I went into do not disturb mode and started painting. I love making mandalas even if sometimes I don't really know what my strokes mean. I enjoy the spontaneity of these paintings because I never have a preconceived idea on how it would turn out. 

A mindless watercolor doodle to fill in the white space

Last night, I had an urge to do something different not on the pages of my planner, but on its cover. There was something about having a planner with a generic looking brown faux leather cover that did not sit too well with me. With all due respect to Starbucks and their amazing ability to start a phenomenon on Filipinos' annual obsession with planners, I wanted mine to look a bit different because every second person in Manila probably has a card filled with peppermint mocha and toffee nut latte stickers somewhere. I remember attending a training at the office one time and I think 5 out of the 8 participants brought their Starbucks planners with them. I brought my red Mercury drug (!!!) notebook, coz I use that and not my planner to jot down notes at work. Thank you Mercury Drug, gamot ay siguradong bago.

Anyway, I took out my Reeves Acrylic paint set, and without a plan or a specific design in mind, I started painting little triangle patterns on my planner. I dunno why, but I've been crazy about these geometric patterns lately (see blog header!). Unlike watercolor, acrylics tend to adhere to different supports other than paper, so it really integrated well with the planner's cover. The dark colors were really opaque and brush strokes were hardly visible. The yellow pigment however, was bit transparent, so I had to apply triple coating. I kinda like how it turned out. There is some sort of tribal vibe to it, don't you think? I can't decide if I want to fully cover the whole thing with paint or keep it as is. Either way, I'm happy that my planner doesn't look like anyone else's.

So you see, exercising creativity can be done by anyone every day. Whether it be doing a full painting, doodling on your journal or writing down your plans and things to do for the day, everyone can practice being creative. It does not require any qualifications or a degree in art. Make a mess, play with color, go crazy with all sorts of materials! There is no real formula for it. All you need to do is open yourself to the possibilities.