Tea with McNair

• doodle on

.Great comments and reactions to last week's post: doodle: a theory of everything. [ HERE, if you missed it or need a refresher.] 

Some sample comments and a response, or two, from the Tea master. (I have edited a bit for length.)

From Ms Muffin: Thanks for this post! I consider myself a creative person, but had not yet found a good way to store ideas and projects I have in my head. I had a kinda-doodle book - but I would only draw projects already finished in my head. Just ideas or inspirations... I had no place to put them. I also often come across things that inspire me: words, sayings, magazines pictures. I can't believe how easy the solutions is to just put it all in a book. Weirdest thing - I already had a blank notebook sitting on a shelf, waiting to be used! I am happy now that I have a place to put EVERYTHING that pops in my mind, or I find and want to save—even just fragments. I am going to enjoy this so much! I can't tell you how glad I am that I stumbled upon your doodle post!

Hey, Ms Muffin (and everyone): your sketchbook is whatever you make it, fill it with, add to it, let others doodle in, paste in... This is why a strenuously urge you to start with blank (unlined, not colored paper) pages. You can write without lines, but with lines (even faint, lavender, Barnes & Noble gift journal lines) you will feel compelled to write. It's YOUR sketchbook. Put you in it.

...is next?

From Juicy: How do you rediscover the enthusiasm of your childhood? The answer, I believe, lies in the word itself. Do you think so?

Not everyone who is pursuing a life's passion discovered it as a child. Though we all drew, painted, played with clay as children, many great artists did not get at their grand works till mid life. (Check you college Art History book. Most of the great works we all studied ("Next slide please") we created by folks in their fifties and beyond.

Then theirs my long-time friend (since sixth grade) Steve Bjorkman (byerk' mun) who hs been "doodling since before me met and now illustrates books of his own books and others, including Jeff Foxworthy (Silly Street, Dirt On My Shirt.) The magic of Steve's art is it still has a doodled quality to it. His economy of line suggests and he trusts our imaginations to do the rest. In the video, below, watch my pal Steve doodle illustrations for Silly Street—see an old, enthusiastic child at work.

For me, whether it's writing, sketch, or performing (all forms of doodling that I first enjoyed as a kid) I find those early enthusiasms stirred and rekindle just by jumping in and starting. The first lines (of words or an image) may not be much, but it gets my juices flowing and soon I am the happy doodler. These next several days I have a lot of writing* to do. I am excited about the creative process and am certain my inner perfectionist will do everything to frustrate the process. (I have not told him where I will be. In fact, I am going to a few NEW spots to work. He'll never find me there!)

And then there's this...

 From Ajax: Great post! I'm 36, recently was diagnosed with ADD. I'm using doodling as an opportunity to re-imagine how I work. I'm done with linear thinking, project management plans, black and white agendas. I've been "drawn" to the art of storyboarding, mind mapping, and doodling. It is so exciting to dream about the possibilities of riding the waves of my ADD instead of fighting it. It is all still new, so I find myself straddling between the linear world and the sketchbook world. My challenge: taking my dreams and drawings from sketchbook and making them a reality in a world of linear thinkers.  Thank you for sharing your drawings and dreams with, they have been so helpful and inspiring!

You said it all, Ajax. Make it real.

Your turn, Tea reader.

What's on your TO DOodle List today?

* I shall be "scribbling" dialogue all day...and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

[ Please read & watch brief post, below, posted in the middle of the night.]

• and now this - again, still

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Compassion International has been in Haiti since 1968—currently sponsoring (feeding, clothing, educating, training in a vocational skill, and spiritual educating) over 60,000 children. Many more need sponsorship. HAITI UPDATE HERE.)

• reverence for doodling

Hugh MacLeod has been doodling wit and wisdom on the back of business cards for years (not just an expression of speech, but an accurate measurement of time.)

His book, IGNORE EVERYBODY, is an expansion on a much-read online essay How To Be Creative on the Change This website. Read the online essay version, if you like it, grab the book.(Same thoughts, expanded.) His email's are filled with his unique doodles, insights, and blogging on everything from the marketing/advertising tips to the life-in-the-big-city, and frequent references to God (reverently.)

He both quotes scripture and uses "colorful language." Do subscribe (free) at GAPINGVOID.com. A few favorites from recent emails:

 

 

{ More "Doodle Posts" coming this week. We (other readers and I) are eager to hear about how your sketchbook is being used and what you are doodling and saving in your sketchbook: thoughts, ideas, recommended books/film/local exhibits/plays/ephemera.}

• doodle - palooza

Cole, an old pal from the Bay area (pause to reflect), read my "doodle post" (see: doodle: a theory of everything,  below this post) and sent a link to a remarkable array of doodlers on Flickr. Watch. Be inspired. Get doodling!

Be sure to click the expand button in lower right to view it in Full DoodleVision.

• doodling: a theory of everything

This is the post I meant to post a few weeks ago... I knew what I wanted to say. I have said it in a thousand conversations responding to “How do I...” questions:

How do I...
...improve my public speaking (preaching, teaching, presentation skills)?
...learn to draw, even as a hobby?
...work on my writing..or...write a book I have in mind?
...hone my performance skills (acting, dancing, singing) chops in between productions?

My response has always been conversational in style—whether over lunch, an email. I’ve replied to scores of parents concerned for a “talented” son or daughter. So, it’s in my head, just plunk it our on the old Mac and post it!

As I plunked...the post became over-epic. (Too long.) Like young Mozart’s “too many notes,” I had to many words. (4,000) I needed to “murder your darlings” (edit!) I knew that the heart of this issue was also the soul and operating vision behind this blog. Now, how to say it all in few words.

Along the way I’ve happened upon websites and blogs that quoted and linked my bloggings—mostly they are positive. Thank you, all. One, filled with praise, carried a caution that concerned me. He warned, gently, that Tea With McNair is for more advanced creative types. Not at all my intentions. In fact, I hope to be a friendly goad and encourager to those who are stuck believing there are part of the grand—and fictitious—”non-creative.”

Then, in the mail, along comes Dawn Devries Sokol’s new “book” DOODLE DIARY Art of Journaling...for Girls. Dawn assures me she is already working on Boy Doodles. (Probably filled parachutes, tanks, hot rods, and dinos.)

DOODLE DIARY is a GREAT little “book” (7”x5”) I place it in quotes as it IS a book, with instruction, encouragement, myth busting, fear slaying, and fear whacking pros from Dawn to get anyone past their fear of doodling. (You want me to draw? I CAN’T draw.) Writer/artist Dawn Sokol has also placed on virtually every page (except for a few delicious blank (NO LINES) pages) her own joyous doodlings. These jump start, spurs us onward, lift us to new flights of imagination, inquiry, and, by design, doodling.

 [ Doodling usually brings to mind crooked geometric shapes born of boredom: while “on hold” or in a waiting room with stacks of old Newsweak mags.]

Doodling can be anything :: words, sketches, a reminder of something to Google later. Anything dashed off without self-consciousness over penmanship or craftsmanship. We’re playing, thinking “out loud.“ That is, I believe, what Dawn Sokol has in mind (and heart) in Doodle Diary. Along with her publisher, the effulgent Gibbs Smith (a real person and the creator of fun and fascinating books.) Each page prompts us to doodle, paste, “Stick-It” (2 pages for stickers): Heroes, 5 Favorites, I Hate, I love, What I learned, Found...Today. Even a place to write/draw about your “Future Self.” (I’m gonna need more pages, please.) 

I am inspired by this “book.” I doodled my responses in my own everywhere-all-the-time sketchbook and remembered that I don’t doodle, draw, paste as much as I want to. I had the same response when I got my first copy of SARK’s Journal and Play!book (1993.) Both Dawn and SARK were once little girls with all the commensurate art supplies. The difference with these two ladies: they didn’t let formal education squash their passion (a word a prefer to “talent.”)

[ Dawn’s books, including Doodle Diary, are in the BOOKS... section of this blog, column left, click and grab! SARK’s there, two, always.]

        

Hear an interesting quote, make a note; have an idea for a new layout for your office/studio/workspace, doodle a design...doodle three (try them all); friend recommends a “little” film, book, new wine bar, doodle a note. It is you “TO DOodle LIST.”

NOW, the answer to all the HOW DO I... questions. This is why the TEA blog exists. It is the core OBJECTIVE of most of my speaking, coaching, seminaring. This objective motivated the creation of my Recapturing Your Creative Spirit keynote. [ Watch it on line, from the link in the “Prologue”, above “Watch This.”]

If you are a SPEAKER...you will improve your speaking by doodling in a little sketchbook any ideas, observances, quotes that you capture along the trail. (Especially writing—“word doodles”—to improve what you say and how you phrase it.) On the first page of every sketchbook I have: “Anything worth remembering, is worth writing down.”  (see next)

WRITERS....draw, paint, sketch, DOODLE, shoot photos (even with your iPhone) and your observational skills will accelerate and your writing will have more specificity, detail, and be more vivid, enthralling, tasty. 

ACTORS (all PERFORMANCE artists) carrying a sketchbook to capture interesting people, places, and environments that will be research for a character, set design, new song lyric...choreographic piece.

Visual ARTISTS, write, journal, and even put into words why you paint, why you sculpt, why you create...in any medium.

MANAGERS / DIRECTORS / CEO’s....drawing anything, UNselfconsciously, will access parts of your imagination that you may not be maximizing in business and life.

If you take it everywhere and use it daily, your sketchbook connects you current ideas and experiences to follow up action and growth, ergo TIES = Take It Everywhere Sketchbook.

“ T.I.E.S. ” Think of a sketchbook as a bottomless manila envelope in which you collect and save bits of life’s experiences—many of which you create. Again, do not fuss with or care about penmanship, or whether what you doodle looks exactly like what you were looking at. It’s all a playful exercise and a memory nudge.

Challenge yourself to doodle and write with new tools that will also awaken new corners of your mind: small colored felt pens, a fountain pen (widely available at office barns, artist supply shops.)

Adventure lies ahead. Discovery. 

Personal growth. and just the flat out, in-the-moment joy of doodling—words and pictures just for fun.
 
Everyone I know that “doodles” (words, images, etc.) on a regular basis is a “passion forward” person. (Not all of them are “artists”.)  They are all afflicted with the newly identified “ACC” syndrome. When you make the conscious choice and daily effort to cary—everywhere—a “sketchbook” you will expand your perspective on life.

Thankfully we have Dawn Sokol, SARK, Batty Edwards (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain), Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Tea with McNair, and a thousand other resources to cheer you onward. (Check BOOK list, left, for above titles.) Whether you are a young girl, old guy like me, or undecided...grab Dawn’s little book for doodling, lash it to your sketchbook, start looking around for corners of life and activities you have not yet tried.

Your only fear should be who you will become if you do NOT “doodle.”

Repeat daily.

>> In two days, Doodle Too: a guide for parents (for nurturing well-balanced doodlers)

For tips on picking out your first sketchbook, HERE is a previous blog on just that point.

• doddling: key to success...for all

Get your sketchbooks ready. The final coat of varnish is being delicately brushed on to the long-awaited, much-promised, and embarrassingly tardy Tea post on the magnificent value of doodling and it's kin.

 

Grab that sketchbook (or run to target, Walgreen's, etc. and get one, NOW) and your zipper bag of doodling tools (your choice, but include color felt pens/pencils...and...?)

While you wait: watch (or set your Tivo) for Rubicon and Mad Men on AMC, the best two, back-to-back hours currently  on the tube. You haven't been watching Rubicon—Sunday night is episode four? You can catch up on line, here—RUBICON—and see "Full Episodes." This is an espionage thriller without all the shooting and car chases—in the vein of the classic Robert Redford film, Three Days of the Condor. AMC airs the new episode of Rubicon  twice each Sunday night.

See you back here soon-ish...with your sketchbook.

Photo: My studio/office, top shelf, recent sketchbooks (30 of more than 150); next shelf down, blank sketchbooks-in-waiting and a few art supplies (mostly small watercolor sets.) Far left, one each from my collections of pith helmets and globes. (All globes purchased at swapmeets, garage sales, etc. for a few bucks each. Pith helmets, a little more.)

• yellow

Fresh lemons, sunshine, marigold's, daisies, roses, goldfish, Dick Tracy's hat and overcoat, pepper's, school buses, lemonade, Tinkies, submarine, sweet corn-on-the-cob, and happy children around the world playing in the dirt, the street, or anywhere available.

Compassion International has over one million fully sponsored children and there are a million more that need someone like you, or your family, to send them some sunshine.

For the cost of a shirt from your favorite pro-ball team (not a jersey, just a good t-shirt), or three, medium-size latte's a week, or a dinner for two at your local cafe (not a restaurant), you can provide an education, school uniform, daily hot meal, vocation training in a practical trade, spiritual training, and more - - all through Compassion's unique child development program.

You can correspond with your child on a regular basis and send birthday, Christmas, and family gifts to your child. The average family of a child in Compassion comes from a family who's income is less than two dollars a day.

Compassion also leads trips around the globe for sponsors to meet, face-to-face, and spend time in country with their child. In 2008 more than four thousand sponsors met their child on life altering trips to Tanzania, Peru, India, and many other countries where Compassion works in partnership with over five thousand churches.

Use any of the links in this post to visit Compassion.com, learn more, and start TODAY to bring a little more "yellow" into the life of a child in any of Compassion's twenty-five countries.

 

Click on the photo array (above) to go to a Flickr site to see enlargements of each of these kids. And send me the photo of the child you've sponsored through Compassion.

" The opposite of poverty is not wealth, it's enough. "

            - - Wess Stafford, President, Compassion International

Visit the Compassion Blog to get answers to most frequently asked questions about sponsoring a child through Compassion International.

• if it can, it will

  Long-time friend "Mike A" sends out a weekly (and more often) breath of fresh air called Mikey's Funnies. From outright jokes to silly (true) human stories each one is a welcome relif in my email box filled with updates of the millions of dollars I mistakenly left in an African country I have never visited.

Mikey's Funnies bring a smile, a chuckle, and even a good belly laugh. Today's was funny and quite helpful. I pass it along (as Mikey encourages us to do) in hopes it will brighten your day, lighten you heart, and you will sign up for your very own FREE  Funnies [ HERE] or visit Mike's on-going giggle fest on Facebook. 

And now, without any further doo-dah, 08.05 A FUNNY, complete:

Okay, you've heard of Murphy's famous Law: Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Well, there are many other related Laws. Here are some:

After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.
--Lorenz's Law of Mechanical Repair

Identical parts aren't.
--Beach's Law

Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner.
--Anthony's Law of the Workshop

Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
--Tussman's Law

If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
--Lowery's Law

The solution to a problem changes the problem.
--Peer's Law

There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance.
--William's Law

Handy Guide to Modern Science:
       1. If it's green or it wiggles, it's Biology.
       2. If it stinks, it's Chemistry.
       3. If it doesn't work, it's Physics.

Machines should work. People should think.
--IBM's Pollyanna Principle:

The most ineffective workers will be systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage - management.
--The Dilbert Principle

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
--Ehrlich's Law

It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you are in a hurry.
--Ralph's Observation

If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.
--Cannon's Comment 

Thinly sliced cabbage.
--Cole's Law

today'sTHOT • • • •
He who sees only half the problem will be buried by the other half.

Thanks, Uncle Mike!   

• Subscribe to free Funnies HERE now!

•    •    •    •    •    •    •

 [ Illustrations by McNair - - from my forthcoming book on Brainstorming. Top drawing is Uncle Sakowitz, created for my theatre troup at Epcot, SAK Theatre. SAK is still going strong in downtown Orlando at SAK COMEDY LAB—the improv center of the Milky Way. Go this weekend and tell 'em "McNair sent us." They'll put extra butter sauce in your Coke. Cartoons are copyright, 1988, 2006 by C. McNair Wilson. ]