Where Creativity Begins
Letting ideas run out and iterating designs
One of my mentors, Georges from ileava jewelry, shared advice with me this past week: “create until you run out of ideas - then real creativity begins.”
He explained that our environment consciously or subconsciously influences us. We generally regurgitate what already exists in the world.
In order to create something original, we not only have to expand past what others have made (for example, by not referencing Instagram or Pinterest too frequently for inspiration) but beyond the ideas our brains can readily conjure.
As a practical tip, he recommended taking a design idea and iterating on it over and over until it morphs perhaps unexpectedly far from the original thought.
I like the concept of chasing creativity rather than finding it somewhere buried within yourself. Like trying to catch the wind, it’s elusive but the effort will probably at least move you somewhere new.
Letting ideas run out
I’m far from the point Georges referenced of “creating until you run out of ideas”.
However, when working with Mitsuro (the traditional Japanese wax) I can see glimpses of where the obvious-to-me design ideas end.
I made dozens of my Open Heart pendant with slight tweaks to technique and shape. I’ve tried various spiraling loops and ribboning rings. There’s been a lot of twisting and overlapping of wax.
One of the nice things about Mitsuro is that no two pulls of wax are ever the same, so each design attempt is always slightly unique.
My next evolution toward “running out of ideas” is to create pieces by mixing techniques and mediums. So I will use Mitsuro but then combine the pieces with elements designed in other forms of wax or directly fabricated in metal. Hopefully the unique combination of approaches will yield increasingly unique creations.
Iterating
As you would imagine, there are real benefits to doing something over and over. Even in my relatively modest amount of time working on a few designs, I can see marginal improvements.
One design that I want to finalize as a piece in my collection is a contour wedding band (pictured above). I showed the original prototype the other week (below).
I want to get the best ribboning and V-shape possible so I’ve made quite a few test models. From the many I made in wax, I chose the best two to cast in silver. I’ll then clean up the design in metal and see if I like it enough to use as my final version.
Honing skills
In addition to making new designs, I’m very focused on improving my skills so that I can better bring my designs to life.
I finished my third fabricated ring at jewelry school. Each one required greater filing precision and I am now much more comfortable shaping pieces directly in metal. In fact, I was able to finish an earring that I made a few months ago but at the time didn’t have the skill to complete (the piece wasn’t quite right in silver and needed quite a bit of sawing and sanding).
Next week, I hope to get a few more pieces back in silver to continue tweaking.