I’m sharing my method of concept journaling - see if it opens up new ideas for you !

I have often been asked how I come up with the ideas for my paintings. I don’t put fruit in a bowl and light it up, or sit on a hill and paint a landscape, I don’t take a photo of a person and paint that. Nope. I take out my sketchbook and write about what is on my mind, things that I can’t get off my mind, why something has affected me or how it has affected me or a situation I need to resolve. What will happen is my visual brain takes over and all of a sudden I’m sketching. Sometimes what ends up on my canvas has nothing to do with my original writing or thought but the process helped me determine a soluton or gave me a direction to take.

here's how you can incorporate this type of process with your work...
Let’s say you need to find out why Grace in the cubicle at one end of office doesn’t even know Linda’s name at the other end of the office - insert shrug here? No! Start to write it out - your frustrations with it, why they should connect, how you might get them to interact, what you think they are thinking, how you think they are acting, any ideas you have (even fire both and rehire) just ramble... I let the dark thoughts surface too coz who’s gonna read them ? just me but once I put them out there I can move past them.

relocate

Oh and I’d like to suggest you NOT do this in your usual state and place of thinking/working - at a desk, on a stability ball, on a run... step away, go somewhere different - a beach? a park? on your deck? at a cottage? A switch of the environment will inspire new thoughts.
Now, take a breath, look back over your writing (if it’s legible - mine often is not as I like to spill it all out as quickly as possible, and yes, I’m suggesting you use good old pencil and paper to do this!) and pick out key words that have surfaced. One of these words or thoughts will be the key to the direction you need to take.
Let your mind wander on to what those words mean, what you need them to mean, and how you might get there. My sketch pages end up with circled words, arrows and indecipherable drawings but ultimately they land on one canvas (well sometimes more than one :)) In fact often the title for a painting emerges this way as well. The struggle or thoughts I was exploring boil down to one word or intention that has then become a piece of art. And more than that - it’s off my mind and I’m moving forward.

assess

Doodle! So my art is figurative (and yes I could draw you hair for hair in high realism but I don’t like to) and you may think you can only draw stick figures or people wouldn’t even recognize a beach ball if you threw the drawing at them but who cares? it’s for you, and you will know what it is and what it means - sometimes I tear up the pages after I’ve spilled or I keep them to see where I’ve come from. You decide. Either way just get to it!! Try it, see what it can do for you and ultimately, for your team.

Here’s an example of one of my pages and how it ended up on canvas. I chose this piece as it was at a point when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do - keep painting and trying to sell my work? create workshops and share my passion for art? work for someone else? go back to interior design - wtw?! so i started to ramble on about what each might do for me, where I was at, where I’d been and then I started to sketch and then went back to writing again... this went on for awhile (lol) when I boiled it down it was about sharing and teaching. Sharing the skills I have picked up, sharing my life on canvas so people would realize they are not the only ones thinking about these things, teaching others to share their stories. So while I was planning out the studio and services I’d offer, this is the painting I was working on. It’s called ‘journey’.