Two Exercises to Unleash Your Inner Creativity

Activities That Help Beginners Discover Their Creative Potential

Jun 26, 2009

Creativity is a respectable and desirable personality trait for both individuals and employers. These exercises will quickly wake up the right side of your brain.

Immediately activate your right brain and discover your creative mind:

The easiest activity you can do to immediately increase your creativity is to create and manipulate a color wheel. Use any type of paint (watercolor, acrylic, oil) and identify the primary colors: red, blue, yellow. Primary colors cannot be mixed by combining any other colors; hence the name primary. Every other color can be created if you have the primary colors, white and black.

To begin your color wheel, grab a piece of paper and place a small dab of one red at the top. Place a dab of yellow and blue paint below the red on the far side of your paper. These dabs should create a large triangle and have enough space in between them for at least one more dab of color between them.

Next, take turns mixing two primary colors together to create a secondary color, place a dab of the secondary color in between the primary colors you used to create it. For example, in the space between the yellow and blue dab should be a green dab.After you have completed your color wheel you should have six colors in all arranged in the shape of a circle.

Once you understand exactly how color is created, you can expand your knowledge through experimentation. Create a tertiary color by mixing two secondary colors together. Observe how a color reacts when a dab of black or white is added. Experiment as much as possible with color; enhance your understanding by placing different colors next to each other or mixing all of the colors together.

A greater understanding of color generates a more visual mind and a more creative outlook.

An activity that can be repeated daily to generate more creative ideas and a better understanding of your creative self.

Experiment boundlessly with several mediums: colored pencils, markers, paint, charcoal, paper and glue, ink, crayons or photography. Keep in mind that nobody will see what you create and let your imagination run wild. Scribble on the paper, splatter paint onto a canvas and then smear it around with your fingers.

This activity’s purpose is to familiarize oneself with the appearance and feeling of a specific medium. Mix crayons with markers; break all of the rules you may have in your mind.If you find yourself thinking ‘I shouldn’t do that’ or ‘that would look bad’ immediately act in the opposite manner. It is important to experiment with anything that comes to mind.

By suppressing a thought for fear of it looking bad or breaking the rules definitely smothers creativity.In order to be creative, you must allow your brain to generate thousands of ideas regardless of their practicality. Although some ideas will seem silly or unrealistic, many others will surprise you with their usefulness.

The copyright of the article Two Exercises to Unleash Your Inner Creativity in Painting/Drawing is owned by Sarah Smith. Permission to republish Two Exercises to Unleash Your Inner Creativity in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.