Friday, March 18, 2005

The Leonardo da Vinci technique

I've been reading about a creativity technique Leonardo da Vinci used. Cracking Creativity by Michael Michalko describes how da Vinci would look at stains on walls, patterns in mud etc and imagine seeing battles and figures within the random patterns. Sometimes he would even fill a sponge with paint and throw it at a wall to see what the patterns suggest.

I devised an equivalent for 2005 using my PC's Paint accessory: I will search for some random google images and select one image (often a complex image with many colours). I will copy and paste the image into Paint and then go into Image Attributes and change the image to black & white. Then I go to Image and Invert Colours. I can select areas of the image to find inspiration or select specific areas with the Magnifying Glass tool.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

your an interesting fella..shame the world's so bloody big. posts such as this one are good for the brain

John said...

Thanks Pete. It's great to get positive feedback; especially when the internet is so full of flaming! Check out the new posts coming soon - they take a totally different direction. Let me know what you think.

Anonymous said...

I'm an artist who also enjoys writing. At odd times I have found myself looking intensely at ugly wood paneling, tiles, and popcorn ceilings, finding interesting compositions and characters "hidden" in the grains, bumps, and blobs. Does that mean I am a genius? :) Thank you for such and enjoyable, creative site!

Sandra

John said...

Sandra, you most surely are a genius and your taste in blogs is exemplary ;)

Shrubbery is a good one too - I often look up trees and shrubs on Google images and find cartoon characters in the patterns.