Cultivating Creativity and Imagery

That depends on what you define to be creative.

By using what you already know and making a reference to something else.

With your imagination.

>>2880762
Take something you know and flip it or combine it with something else you know. Chances are that it will be creative to someone else

>>2880762

I've been obsessed lately with this OP, mostly because I feel as if I have lost my creativity.

>>2880762

See cultivating imagination as cooking. Creativity is your kitchenware, it is like your cast iron skillet that gets better over time with more use, but knowledge is the ingredient. To become good at cooking, you need to keep practicing cooking. Keep using your skillet (your creativity) but you also need to buy new ingredients (keep exposing yourself to more information).

So in other words, go read more books, go watch more movies, and STUDY THEM. See what works, see what doesn't work. See how it could be better. Read articles, go outside and see the world. Talk to people on the streets.

And then, take what you learned and try to put it together in new ways. Creativity is the ability to put together old things to make something new that also makes sense or works. You only get better with time.

>>2880762

>Things I found help creativity

>-Manic Depression
>-Dexamphetamine (meth too) (Any drug that increase dopamine levels in the D2 receptor will cause increased flow-rate of ideas, divergent thinking and capacity to visualize concepts)
>-Exercise (Jogging specially)
>-Reversed circadian rhythm, aka living in the night and sleeping during the day
>-No sleep
>-Any type of sleep disorder, specially sleep paralysis
>-Magic MushroomS/LSD usage
>-Listening to music in complete darkness
>-Going for a walk


>Things I found hinder creativity

>-Stress (high cortisol levels leave my mind completely blank, no thoughts no sounds it's just me looking at the abyss)
>-Meditation (some claim it helps lower stress and increases creativity, but to me it only helps calm my thoughts with leads me with a silent mind that is incapable of connecting bizarre ideas between each other)
>-Caffeine, Nicotine and Modafinil, make me razor sharp focused but I no longer feel an spontaneous flow of ideas in my mind
>Eating healthy combined with a healthy sleep schedule (It will make you a reasonable and stable member of society and that just kills it, completely).
To me it seems you need a malfunctioning brain in order to be creative, my creativity has always been stifled by following a healthy lifestyle, not sure if this is the case for everyone else but having had both unstable and stable lives, I can't say I don't miss the old days of suffering in the dark and using my mind to escape reality and imagine vivid worlds to get lost in. Can anyone relate?

>>2880925
>(high cortisol levels leave my mind completely blank, no thoughts no sounds it's just me looking at the abyss)
Is this real? If it is, it explains a lot.
How do I get rid of cortisol?

>>2880927

Yes, cortisol is the stress hormone and when high it will completely hijack your frontal cortex function and leave your cognitive abilities in the shitter, specially if you experience it for very long periods of time. You can do some research on this topic, stress is highly correlated with Alzheimer disease. Obviously, the simplest and most effective way to remove cortisol from your life is to remove whatever sources of stress you currently have on your life, or finding a way to make it less of an issue for you. Meditation has also been proven to reduce cortisol levels, so will a healthy diet, exercise and good sleep. Testosterone also seems to be involved in Cortisol regulation somehow, as in the higher your test levels the lower your cortisol but unless you actually need test, injecting for life is not a very good idea.


I am trying to fix my blank mind too, but it's a bit complicated.

>>2880925
fucking wat

>>2880925
lack of sleep is literally the single most harmful thing to creativity and any other activity that requires you to think and have a sharp mind.

>>2880925

>Things I found hinder creativity
>Stress (high cortisol levels)
>Eating healthy combined with a healthy sleep schedule

Bad cortisol levels are directly related to a fucked up sleep schedule and unhealthy eating, genius.

>>2880925
>excuses to have shit health
nice try faggot

>>2880979
>>2880984
>>2880987
>>2880994

Oy, these are anecdotal experiences not scientific facts. I currently have a very healthy diet and exercise often. I am just saying that when I was a depressed fucktard living during the night, eating shit and crying into sleep in a cold tube listening to music, I had a greater capacity or need to get lost in my mind and I found it way easier to create things that expressed my dark feelings, mostly because I had a reason to. Back then, I could have spent hours in the dark meditating because I felt I needed it to reassure myself and keep my sanity, now it's tedious to even think about it.


Anyhow, like I said, I welcome all opinions in this as it is a topic that interests me greatly.

>>2880984
>>2880987

So I take it you guys don't become increasingly more creative as you continue to stay awake further into the night? It's always the same to me, I can't do anything but be sharp focus in the morning, like right now for example, if I wanted to imagine something I could, but there's no random thoughts coming up, it's very stable and quiet, but when I get past 12 am and up to 6 am, I have a completely different head space where images/ideas just come up on their own, without me having to force it.

Is this not the case for you?

>>2881019
I get that state of mind when I'm tired and go to sleep, before I actually fall asleep. I usually remember those ideas that pop up during that time frame in the morning and can start working on them with a focused, fresh mind.

I've done this whole going to sleep in the morning and waking up early afternoon thing for quite a while myself and it just wasn't worth it. In the long run, it slowly eroded my mental health and made me constantly feel tired and demotivated.

>>2880762
Read a lot of books.

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>>2880762
Healthwise, prod yourself with some veggies/fruits and drink a good amount of water. Eat chicken.

Studying comic books, other artists and watching movies will give you a great deal of influence or inspiration. Once you've found something, I suggest reading or find further information on how and what influenced that work.

If you want metaphors and symbolism, I'd recommend to look up cultural and religious symbolism first. Check up art movements as well.

Few exercises I would suggest is to listen to music and compose a picture based on lyrics or title name, or you can use a "keyword" that will act as a central theme.

Go for a walk and study the environment, people etc. for frame of reference too.

If art had a sisterword, it'd be remix.

>>2880925
Holy shit dude the only good advice you gave was excercise and listening to music in the dark.
If you need to do the rest of that in order to be creative, you're messing your own future up.

>>2880762
By understanding the science of creativity; the neuroscience of creativity. Understand what is happening during divergent thinking(idea generation), and convergent thinking(creating/picking solutions to problems out of ideas you brought to the surface through divergent thinking).

You need to research it yourself otherwise you won't learn enough to benefit from it. People who are commonly regarded as creative have high divergent thinking. However, the problem is high divergent thinking and high convergent thinking(general indication of intelligence) tend to not come in a pair. If you have low idea generation ability your best bet would be to study creativity neuroscience and apply the methodologies and understanding.

Honestly I don't think you can really teach yourself how to be creative. I think that's one of the "talent" parts of art, you either have crazy images pop into your head most of the time, or you don't. The people who don't become good observational artists, or constructionists who excel at mathematical concepts like perspective. Maybe I'm wrong but that's what it seems like to me.

>>2880925
>manic depression
>lsd and the other drugs mentioned
>exercise

you are absolutely right

>everything else

complete bullshit

>>2881105
Creativity has little to do with "crazy images popping into your head" though. For commercial art, creativity is solving problems using the visual library you have at your disposal. For personal work, it's the same + the addition of having a passion or interest and something you want to express.

>>2881125
Then I think that the "talent" part of it is the brain's predisposition for those things. I've seen some artists who practice for years and are still unable to synthesize concepts or metaphors in visually interesting ways.

Plus I don't like to think that creativity is so easily defined, I like to think that its a bit more unknowable than that. I respect your opinion though.

>>2880762
One trick I do is that I imagine storytelling/concept process as an RPG character creation, like Skyrim or smth.

Basically you have sliders for all different attributes that you can drag from extreme left to extreme right. Usually it's
>mood
>time and space
>color keys
And a couple others. I just drag the sliders around, imagine what it does to the project and let that inspire me for a while. Then I fiddle with the sliders some more until they are harmonized, just like with the RPG.
>calm, serene
>14th century, India
>vivid green, orange and purple
Completely random. Think about those buzz words, let them shape your story.
Create contrasts among characters and settings to catch interest, use emotion to lock the viewers inside your story.

Another tip is to analyze good movies, the absolute pinnacles of composition and visual storytelling. Remember that scene with hand in Titanic (pic)? That's "show, don't tell" principle for ya. You know it's steaming hot in there without the artist forcing it upon you.

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>>2881633
forgot pic