Art

Thea has been an artist all her life. Since she was litte, getting a crayon and drawing on the inside of her aunt wedding dress. She attended Hummingbird Art Camp Every summer as a child. If there is a craft project, Thea would like to do it!

She took 2 semesters at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has created Painted Tarot, Cats in Space Tarot and a Love Your Self Oracle Deck.

Thea has a passion for creating. She loves to make Resin jewelry and has recently gotten into sewing!

You are creative. Here you see a painter painting a rainbow unleashing whatever feeling she’s having inside her just creating. You are creative; it doesn’t matter what your medium is. It doesn’t matter if you paint, it doesn’t matter if you write, whatever you do is creative. Remember that, whatever your thing is. Maybe you really like to organize your books. Maybe you really like to doodle on the side of your paper. Maybe you have really great handwriting. Maybe you make embroidery masterpiece. Whatever your creative element is, maybe you just like to color in coloring books – that’s cool too. Just remember that you are creative and you can manifest anything you desire. 

The point of this card is to remind you that your gifts are special and your gifts are unique. You’re the only one like you and you’re the only one that can create the way you create so, when you can create, create often. Make space for creation every day. Make space for creation right now. Even if it’s something small, create. Create whatever is in your mind. Create whatever you’re thinking about unleashed into the world. The point of this card is to remind you that your gifts are special, your gifts are unique, you’re the only one like you and you’re the only one that can create the way you create.

This card is so important to me personally because I often forget to think of myself as an artist. For a long time, I didn’t think I had the skill level to be a professional artist. I have successfully created two tarot decks and this deck. The mind can often fool us into believing untrue things that keep us down. A way to break this is just to declare ownership. You as a human being are a creative. You have creative ideas, you have creative thoughts! Think of yourself in this way. Do not hold yourself back with small ideas of not being good enough or not meeting some unspecified requirements. You already have the skills.

Creativity is like the old joke about the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it. It makes sense to learn how to create balance sheets, calculate the net present value of investments and determine the best target markets , and all of these would be all valuable skills to be sure. But we also need to learn how to creatively solve problems and find opportunities? If creativity is a skill (and many believe that it is), shouldn’t business schools help their students develop it? Shouldn’t it be a requirement for finishing high school? But it’s just like with any skill you want to learn. With time and effort you can learn it. You can learn anything you want to.

Creativity is like a muscle. Everyone is born with the muscle. Some are born with a “creativity muscle” that few others can match, and they use that potential to go to great creative heights. Think about great minds like DaVinci, Dickinson and Jobs. Some have developed their muscle through years of practice. But everyone has the muscle. And like any muscle, it atrophies with disuse. But if we exercise it, we can develop it. I think this is the best analogy I have found to describe how you should think about your creativity. You must know you already have it. If you haven’t used it in a while, it may feel difficult to flex but it will get easier with time and use.

Creativty really is a type of thinking.There are two important parts to creativity: divergent thinking and convergent thinking. In convergent thinking, you narrow down your ideas until you find the one that you will develop into a solution. Divergent thinking, in contrast, is the process of opening up ideas, finding as many solutions as possible. To be creative, you must have both of these processes operating: You develop many ideas, then you narrow down to one. Creativity can be assessed with taking lots of other ideas and meshing them together. It is not necessarily always creating something entirely new but it could also be putting old ideas into new contexts and angles. Thinking about old things in new ways.

Our education system has put the focus on the convergent stage. We ask students to find the one right answer on the standardized test, to crack the case by identifying the single most important aspect of it and to make the balance sheet balance. This part of the creative process is important, but an over-reliance on it, and ignoring the divergent side of the process, leads to atrophy of the creativity muscle. Creativity experts believe that the education system actively diminishes student creativity. To (re)build creativity skills, we need to provide students with the opportunity to practice their divergence skills, to try things they might not otherwise try.

The educational fixation on convergence can be overcome. Remember, you can learn anything you want. Last summer I decided to learn Physics by listening to a great course lecture. And I did it. I have no science background and had to pause the lecture frequently but I have a well rounded understanding of the world that is completely new for me. That’s the thing: you should be continually learning; ithelps you with being creative. You should always strive to learn something new. now it doesn thave to be physics. Obviously focus on what you’re interested in but the world is full of possibilities. If you ever feel in a creative block try watching a Ted Talk or starting a course on something like Coursera. While you try to learn something new, focus on Divergent thinking. Establish an atmosphere in which divergence is the dominant theme. While we never completely ignore convergence, we shift the emphasis away from judging answers to be correct or incorrect, and toward generating many possible answers. Think of learning a creativity as something over which you have ownership.

Give yourself the space to spark ideas. A blank page, a blank canvas, and a blank screen can be intimidating. A collection of examples can help spark the imagination. Look at possibilities. You can go down the Pinterest rabbit hole for millions of ideas. Encourage yourself not to copy but to change or modify the examples. Add your own voice or your own personal touch. What might you do differently? How can you add your own style, connect to your own interests? How can you make it your own?

Allow yourself to just try. Encourage messing around. Most people assume that imagination takes place in the head, but the hands are just as important. To help children generate ideas for projects, we often encourage them to start messing around with materials. Think like a child and get your hands dirty. As children play with LEGO bricks or tinker with craft materials, new ideas emerge. What started as an aimless activity becomes the beginning of an extended project. Maybe just get out the materials and have a throw away to try it out. Sometimes failing a little and seeing how inconsequential the failure makes it easier to start a project. Think outside the box and give yourself lots of things to experiment with. The greater the diversity of materials, the greater the opportunity for creative projects.

Try some projects outside of your comfort zone , to get an even deeper understanding of the creative design process. You don’t have to start being a painter but maybe try taking a painting class or just getting a small canvas and painting something. Or try writing a poem. Or color a coloring book. Whatever is outside of what you’re normally drawn to doing. Forcing your brain to do something new can often reinvigorate your spirit into what you really enjoy creating. Emphasize process, not product. What you create doesn’t have to be “good” but it’s respecting yourself enough to play with your brain. To foster and nurture that creative spirit within you. Whetheryou draw stick figures or grand portraits I want you to think of creativity outside of a box.

I’ve emphasized the importance of making things. Indeed, many of the best learning experiences happen when people are actively engaged in making things. We all learn by doing. I didn’t know how to make a tarot deck, I just made one. That is the thing. Whatever you believe you can do, you will be able to do. Focusing on our creativity will open up that type of thinking. But that doesn’t mean we should put all our attention on the things that are made. Even more important is the process through which things are made. As we work on projects, highlight the process, not just the final product. Perfection is always the thief of progress. And it’s easier to finish a project that has been started. Encourage experimentation by honoring failed experiments as much as successful ones. It takes time for children to work on creative projects, 

Give yourself time. You don’t have to finish a creative project a certain amount of time and it will always take longer than you think it will, especially when you’re constantly tinkering, experimenting, and exploring new ideas, as you want to do in all creative endeavors. Trying to squeeze projects into the constraints of a standard time period — or even a few 50-minute periods over the course of a week — undermines the whole idea of working on projects. It discourages risk taking and experimentation, and it puts a priority on efficiently getting to the “right” answer within the allotted time. For an incremental change, schedule double periods for projects. For a more dramatic change: set aside particular days or weeks (or even months) Deadlines are helpful but it’s better to miss deadlines and make great headway than to miss a deadline and give up on the project. You have to find the balance that works for you..

Do reflections and goals assessment continually. It’s great to immerse yourself in projects, but it’s also important for them to step back to reflect on what’s happening. If a project is a chore and no longer brings you joy, maybe it’s time to put that project a way for a bit of time and come back to it. You don’t have to do everything right now. And tabling a project to work on another one you are more excited about is ok! 

Wherever you’re hung up in the creative journey. whether it’s believing in yourself as a creative. or having trouble starting the project itself. Or the most nagging part, following through and finishing projects and completing deadlines. It’s ok. There is plenty of time so take a deep breath. You have time, there is no rush. Just start.

Foster a creative environment by: 

• Eliminating Judgment.
• Establish an Atmosphere of support.
• Practice, Practice, Practice. You can’t become a better basketball player without playing basketball, and you can’t become more creative without practicing creativity.
• Dare to Fail. There can be no creativity when fear of failure overwhelms the desire to create something new.

The best way to ignite your creativity is to just do it. Start something, do something. I had a friend who told me that she wanted to write a book and I told her to do it. And she complained she could not find the time. She told me all about her time constraints, and how she was going to find the time to start writing her book. I told her to just spend a little time on her book every day. She had this mental block that if she couldnt spend several hours on it she couldn’t do it. Often with our projects, we are holding ourselves back in ways that we might not even see. My advice always is, if you want to do the thing, do the thing. My friend just needed to carve out an hour a day and just start! She’d been talking about writing a book for four years — it was time to just start writing one. So one of the key elements of living your life and reaching your maximum potential as the architect of your own life, is to start something or do something. Take the first step. Starting makes you feel good, you’re moving in the right direction and you are taking action in order to build the life that you want to have. 

Quick Fix:

• Do one creative thing right now! maybe it’s doodling on this page.

State these affirmations to yourself:

• My imagination is boundless.
• I am very ingenious and inventive.
• I can enter into a creative state of mind whenever I want to.
• My creative problem solving helps me in my work.
• I have an abundance of creative energy.
• Original ideas come to me all the time.
• I am talented with great creativity and intelligence.
• My ideas are innovative and useful.
• I am creative and have the will to take advantage of my talents.

Homework:

1. Think of yourself as a creative. Name your art and own it. Believe in yourself as an expert in that thing.
2. Start a new project and commit to spending at least 10 min on it every day. Give yourself that gift, with no deadlines or time constraints just 10 good minutes every day on this project.
3. Take an old project that you have started, but have neglected, and assess where you are with it, what is preventing you from finishing it? What still needs to be done? Can you do it today? This is me calling you out, why haven’t you finished this project? Do you now hate this project and need to throw it away? Don’t want to waste yourself and your time?
4. Journaling prompt. Look back on a finished project and pat yourself on the back. get that project out and think about what you put into it? What did you enjoy about this project? Looking back on it, what does it mean for you now? 

Dive Deeper:

Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior by Mark Goulston and Philip Goldberg

The Formula: How Algorithms Solve all our Problems…and Create More by Luke Dormehl

Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic bY Lisa Congdon

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Sir Ken Robinson

Art