When I took my walk today (determined to keep exercise important and not let it go to the bottom of priorities), I was wondering what to write about. What kept coming to mind is balancing play and rest, pushing and being in the flow. Balancing surging ahead and tackling things vs being at ease and focusing on what comes up. It seems to me that creativity is a combination of all of these.

Inner Flow VI, Digital © Diane Clancy

It is actually comforting to me that some genius-type people have said that creativity is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. I know I am capable of hard, consistent work. I feel less certain that I am a creative person – but I do have a lot of trust in the creative process.

Today has been a day of balancing creativity with lots of detail maintenance work. I have been focusing on the blog all week – learning a lot and enjoying that process. But a lot of details fell by the wayside. I have been working at balance.

This digital painting was created as I was playing – learning how to use some plug-ins for Photoshop (KPT filters). Often I create some of my cool (according to some) images as I am just playing around and letting myself just focus on learning. You see, I do like to learn. It is fun to just try to figure out how things work.

Whether it is a computer program or how someone’s mind ticks, I like to understand the world. So I was just trying to figure out how the filters work and I kept adding layer after layer. Some of my images made from these filters have over 50 layers.

Heart of Light I, Digital © Diane Clancy

This is a digital image with at least 50 leayers. Each layer is just a little wispy swirl of light. Just layer upon layer, upong layer. It took many, many hours to create! To me each of these two images are filled with light – but the quality of light is so different in each of them.

Layers in a computer program are like a sheet of clear plastic. If you make a drawing on one layer, and then make a drawing on another layer, and put them together, you can see the images together since the plastic is clear. Layers in programs are like that.

And another neat thing about computer layering is that you can take out any given layer when you want. Layers give me lots of ability to put images together and try things out in a “non-destructive” way. That is, you can try an image with or without a certain part of the image to see what works best. (To me, it is much easier than a pencil and eraser. Though with a pencil you can do things you can’t on a computer!) Finally (for now), you can change the order of layers … sometimes things will look different depending on which image is on top of another image.

Thank you for going on this journey with me exploring creativity and making a side trip into technical details!

– Diane Clancy

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