Glass Planet

What do the words brick, graph, gears, sale, planet, and blame have in common?

Not a darn thing.

These words were generated last night by a random word generator.  My challenge? To sketch an image that incorporates all six words, and in just three to five minutes.

Romney and I made up this "game" last night.  The rules are pretty simple: Each night, find some kind of connection between the randomly generated words and sketch it--fast.

Why, you might ask, would people do such a thing.  Well, Romney and I are each involved right now in trying to uncover and restore our respective passions in life.  We have each discovered that we are and always have been truly passionate about art and being creative.

What we also discovered is that it can be tough as a creative person to get past those inner critics that want to shame us into putting away our pencils and paper, that tell us what we're doing is dumb and will never be good enough and so on.  Those kinds of voices make it really hard to get started when you're staring at a blank page, let alone finish a project.

So our game and its rules were invented to circumvent those nasty "demons" that want us to do anything but express ourselves as artists.  I personally feel that there is real evil in this world, and it hates creativity.  I also firmly believe there is a real force of Good, and part of that force that is imparted to people is the desire to create.

Romney and I are artists, plain and simple.  That doesn't mean I think I'm an artistic genius (pretty sure Romney is, though).  But more and more I am thinking it means that I am denying myself and my Creator if I don't make the most of what talent I have been imparted.

So, our challenge is to embrace passion once again in the field of art.  We are off to a simple start with this game, but we believe it can be a springboard for inspiration and maybe some major projects to sink our teeth into.

Last night was Day One, and we have committed to do a quick sketch with different random words every day through the end of February.

Here is a rough (and quick!) sketch of the image those six words painted in my mind:

What I saw was a glass planet filled with turning gears.  Very steam punk-y.  And a graph behind showing depreciation.  There is a sale tag marked "Clearance," and a brick has been thrown which has shattered the glass.  Who is to blame?  That is the question the image is meant to evoke.

Here is some closer detail.  Obviously, this sketch is very rough, and nothing that would hang in the Louvre. And really, that's the point.  The rules take the pressure off to be brilliant.  Just do it, and do it fast before you can start to doubt yourself.

Quite to my surprise and delight, I found this really inspiring. That image of the glass planet filled with gears and mechanical complexity really intrigued me, so I'm going to play around in Photoshop today and see if I can more fully develop the image of what I saw.

I'll keep posting the results of our game just for fun, and if I wind up creating something more serious from it I'll post that, too.  Thanks for taking a look, and have a wonderful day!