Cropping, collage, and idea generation – David Mankin Course

I’m still enjoying reflecting on and digesting the lessons from the wonderful workshop last weekend with artist, David Mankin, at Coombe Farm Studios.

David is an inspiring, energetic, and generous teacher, and I loved his exercises for abstraction and idea generation. As always, it was also so good to spend time with other artists and enjoy their perspectives and the variety of art we all created over the weekend. And the fooooood! Oh my.

Thank you, all of you, for a very worthwhile and memorable adventure! Click on the image below to watch a little Insta reel I made about the course…

I really enjoyed the experimental mark-making play, collage work, and cropping for idea-generation that David lead us through. It all felt easy to pick up and play with on a day when I only have a short bit of studio time, a great way to get my energy up and generate new ideas, and super fun. These are some of the crops and collages I made that will be going into my idea books.

Can you tell that I like limited colour palettes, dynamic lines, and quiet spaces?

Some of my big take-aways from the course…

• Think less and make more. Create, create, create. The more you create, the more you’ll learn, the more creative you’ll become, and the more you’ll trust your own creativity and be unattached to outcome. If this one doesn’t work out well, others probably will.
• Keep the thinking out of/ for after the playing.
  Believing that there are “right” and “wrong” next moves is a creative block.
• Have a process so your process can offer structure and predictability that will make it more tolerable and even enjoyable to work intuitively.
• Make your process about doing things you enjoy doing so that your process will be fun. The more fun your process is, the easier it is to care less about the outcome, and caring less about the outcome usually results in better art.
• Break your process up into steps that have limits. This will allow you to focus on fewer variables, which can help with both approaches to abstract idea generation and detaching from the outcome.
• Be willing to occasionally make bold moves and take risks that could mess up the whole painting.