Creativity in Action

This weekend, I've been at some concerts at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester. They're part of Chetham's International Summer School and Festival for Pianists. It's a fantastic event which attracts pianists from all over the world and the daily recitals are given by top-class concert pianists such as Peter Donohoe.

Last night, I happened to be sitting next to the Festival's artist-in-residence, Brian Dunce, who was sketching the pianists as they played. It was fascinating to be able to watch a professional artist at work, and I felt it gave me a different insight into the creative process.

Non-artists like myself would be tempted to go for what we consider to be the essential details: the shape of the head, the nose, eyes (almond shaped, of course!), mouth, teeth, the way a child does when drawing a person.

But the professional artist starts with something that is quite amorphous and gradually refines it, altering the contours, marking in the eye sockets, taking into account the bone structure. He examines his subject to see how the various parts are proportioned. Slowly, bit-by-bit, the portrait takes shape.

Another thing that interested me is that the artist experiments. He makes sketches of the face, the body, the pianist's hands on the keyboard. He jots down notes for himself of little details he wants to remember, like the colour of the person's tie, or the way the pianist holds his hands. Sometimes, he will sketch the same thing several times, trying each time to get closer to the essence of his subject.

Then he goes away and reflects on what he has done, and works on a painting which he bases on all of his drawings. It is as if he has been exploring the person he is going to paint, getting to know them, working out how best he can represent him. When he's at the sketching stage, nothing is fixed - it's all trial and error. He's going to have a go and see if something works, but he won't be too upset if it doesn't.

That seems to me to be something that we writers could incorporate into our creative process. Give ourselves time and space to experiment, to try things out. Don't feel we have to jump in at page one of our grand novel and keep writing till we get to the end. Get the feel of what we are writing about.

Let ourselves gradually get to know our characters, explore our settings and the emotions we want to convey, try things out till we discover what will work for us in this particular creation. Eventually, like the artist, we will put it all together and end up with a finished piece of work.