Learning about My Creative Process — 100 Days of Childhood Memories
When I first started #100DaysOfChildhoodMemories, I thought I would get to know my younger self better. That hasn’t really happened. Instead, I’ve gotten to know my creative self better, and she is very interesting.
Doing Creative Work
In Career Coffee, I ask this question, “What does it mean to you to be creative in your work?” If I were to answer this question in the context of my day job, I would probably say something along the lines of creative problem solving — in coming up with product features, in prioritizing within constraints, in managing people matters of all kinds.
But with #100DaysOfChildhoodMemories, I’m faced with a far more classic form of creativity. I’m drawing! I’m drawing stuff from figments of imagination and memory. Start with a blank page and moments later, poof! An image appears in front of me that can flood me with nostalgia and punch me in the emotional gut.
Having a Muse
If you ask me if I think I can draw, I will tell you that “I’m not sure if Ailian can draw, but Ailian’s muse is very good at it.” In Elizabeth Gilbert’s brilliant TED Talk on the creative process, she talks about how the Greeks believe that when someone does amazing work, that person isn’t being a genius but that they have a genius. That’s how I mostly feel. I don’t think that I have a genius per se, but I feel that there is a muse at work, a creative version of the self, a creative force that’s dancing with me in this process.
I feel like my job each day is to think of a topic and put myself in front of my sketchbook. After that the muse takes over. There are concepts on how to express the topic. There’s some research on images. Then there is the actual drawing. While drawing, there is this feeling of pouring emotion into the moment, into the lines expressed, into the pen pressing and skimming paper. And out comes this drawing. My muse is smug, and I am amazed.
Finding an Original Visualization
I’ve been asked how I think of topics to draw. After the initial brain dump of childhood memories, I still find new topics coming to me every few days. It turns out that it is not hard to come up with topics, but it is very hard to come up with an original visualization. That’s the work of the muse. To figure out how to communicate a concept in a romanticized form. To make it feel familiar as a scene but original as a perspective. That part is a gift.
Creative Guts
For instance, one of the topics on my to-draw list is this memory of receiving these kaya Swiss rolls and walnut cake from the Good and Rich Cake Shop whenever we visited my granduncle and grandaunt. The concept development process is driven by the muse and goes something like this:
“Ok, how about drawing the cakes? Oh, but I’ve already drawn cakes. Ah ha, I could draw them in their pink boxes with the wax paper. Richer context. But then, oh! what if I drew those boxes placed in the fridge, so it’s from the perspective of someone opening the fridge and looking at the pink boxes among shelves of other food? That’s a whole scene right there!”
And that’s how it goes — bigger and bolder and more ambitious visualizations of a simple concept.
“I have no idea if I can pull that off. Maybe it’s not a great idea because then it looks like boxes and not cake.”
That’s the voice of Ailian, who remembers that she’s not a professional artist. But then the voice of the muse goes,
“Maybe so, but wouldn’t that be cool to see?? Looking into a fridge. Aren’t you curious about whether you can pull it off?”
My muse, you see, has creative guts. She doesn’t think anything is beyond her drawing abilities. She wants to keep pushing the vision, keep telling more complex, more original visual stories.
I like to let the muse win. That’s how I got some of my favorite drawings, like anthem (Day 48) and Chinese opera (Day 45). I look at them and think, if you had told me on Day 1 that I’d be producing drawings like that, I’d have said, no way.
Channeling Emotion
My creative self also seems to know what to do with emotion. My muse can stir up emotions, channel it like some kind of force, and then use it to spark connections — between ideas, between people, between my past and present selves.
The Story Behind the Temple Drawing
There are days when the drawing process literally takes my breath away. Like when I drew the one about the temple across the street (Day 59). This Chinese temple was just one of those things that was always in the background of so many childhood memories. But as I grew up and after we moved away, it had no relevance to my life, so I simply haven’t thought about it. For many memories, if I do a Google image search, I can find an approximate image of what the thing looked like. There is absolutely no trace on the internet of that temple. It appears in the edge of this one National Library archive photograph that my father sent me, but if you didn’t live on that street, you wouldn’t see it there.
When I was getting ready to draw the temple, I remember thinking, OMG I have no idea what this thing looks like. I don’t have enough memory of it to draw it! So I started searching for images of Chinese temples, and I chose the ones that come close to the feeling of my memory. Maybe it had this detail of the curves of dragons on the roof. Maybe there was an altar in front? And there was a gate. Right, some kind of gate. And of course, this wooden board with a figure in a martial arts pose. I drew the temple based on some mix of the images that I had collected, but mostly I felt like I was drawing out of thin air. When the drawing was completed, I looked at it and I think I gasped. It felt like I had drawn the feeling of my memory exactly. The concrete image brought my memory into sharper focus. I had drawn a vivid portrait of something barely remembered.
The Story Behind the Grandfather Drawing
Then there was the drawing that made me cry: the one about my grandfather (Day 54). I never expected to experience this in my project. When I thought of that topic, it surprised me that the memory was so clear. I felt like I was there in the living room and I could see all these details — the colors of the curtains, the grayness of the side table, the way the wall mirror had these beveled edges. I didn’t think I could draw it. I still think this one was beyond my drawing abilities. But when I finished it, my drawing bore so much resemblance to my memory that it overwhelmed me. And I started to cry. My grandfather in his reclining arm chair in that corner, reading Chinese newspapers, drinking tea and taking naps. How routine and reassuring it seemed. How when it is gone, it is lost forever, except in memory. I suppose this is another way in which love is remembered.
What does it mean to me to be creative in my work? I think it means finding an original way to say what I know to be true.
Originally published at ailiangan.com on June 17, 2015.
