Joe Fleming wrote:

Arch, I miss the musings...........................

snip

He noted that many woodturners are the same way. They find their
inspiration in other woodturning instead of their life, their
environment, their relationships, their work, or their faith. When we
look to other turners, our work emulates theirs or extrapolates from
theirs. When you look at Binh's work, you would be very hard pressed
to identify his woodturning influences. I would speculate he is
influenced by Frank Sudol, but that is all I can determine. Binh's
work is his own.

So the question becomes, where do I get my ideas, my spark, my
inspiration?

Joe Fleming - San Diego

We surrounded by ideas, sparks, inspirations. They're
EVERYWHERE! Sometimes they're like pale, distant
stars that you can't see if you look right at them. That's
because our eyes are set up with different specialized
areas - one area for details and color but not as sensitive
to light as our "off center" field of vision. Our brains are
like that - only with more specialized areas. The trick
is getting the "idea, spark, inspiration" to the right area
of the brain that can use them.

Though some call it The Creative Process, I believe it's more
like selective synthesis - combining things that already exist
in ways that they've not been combined before and sometimes
exploiting some unusual feature or characteristic of one or
more of those elements/bits and pieces. "Seeing" the new
combination may be why we call people who are really good
at it "visonaries". Everyone has the ability, to a greater or
lesser degree. Listen to a kid describe something and it's
clear that we all have the mental capability. Schools, jobs,
responsibilities often cause us to forget just how amazing
the human brain is amongst all the noise of daily life.

There are some "tricks" to this process, some obvious once
you're made aware of them, some discovered randomly, but
consciously noted when that occurs.

One of these "tricks" is to see what's actually there as opposed
to what your mind wants to impose on what you're seeing. The
classic example of this trick in drawing is to have the subject
being drawn oriented in a different way - a picture of a vase,
face or landscape turned upside down. The "drawer" tends to
make lines representing what they see rather than what they
think a vase, face or landscape is supposed to look like. Even
novice "drawers" who are sure they can't "draw" surprise them-
selves with how well they can, in fact, draw. Remove or reduce
as many preconceived ideas as possible and surprising nice
things happen.

Here's another "trick" I just learned from watching the two
hour vidieo "Bowl Turning with Del Stubbs" (great tape with
lots and lots and lots of good information and great camera
work, along with good running commentary by Mr. Stubbs -
Taunton Books & Videos - ISBN 0-918804-36-1, about $20 US).
Drawing a bowl shape is somewhat difficult - doinng half the
profile is tricky. Doing the whole symetric profile is where
most folks have trouble.

Try this.

Get a big piece of paper and a felt tip.

Without thinking about it too much, if at all, draw a bunch
of sweeping, curving lines and squiggles all over hell.

Get a rectandular mirror about a foot square (stop by a glass
and mirror shop and pick up one of their cut offs)

Hold that mirror about square to the surface of the paper
with all the felt tip penned lines
Look at about 45 degrees to the paper and the mirror,
seeing both the line(s) on the paper and their reflection
in the mirror.

Amazing - you'll see more symetric bolw ideas than you can
shake a stick at.

Want taller, vase ideas? Lean the mirror towards you to
create narrower shapes.

Want shallow bowl or platter ideas? Lean the mirror away
from you.

Move the mirror around the page and more shapes appear!

Being shown this little "trick" made the $20 investment in
Del Stubbs tape worth it - the information in the other
115 minutes was essentially free. If you want the rest
of the valuable information in this tape you're going to
have to make your own investment, either in time at the
library, or out of pocket dollars.

Trick # 4876

Expose yourself to as many shapes and images of shapes
as you have time for - and not just turned wooden shapes.
Doesn't even have to be a shape of the type of thing
you're looking for. You might find a nice set of lines on
a car or motorcycle in the parking lot of the grocery
store/super market, in a picture in a National Geographics
magazine in the doctor's waiting room.

Hell, every time I leave my dontist's office (no, that's not
a spelling error of "dentists". With specialization comes
new titles and "dontists" are very specialized - and expensive.
If you haven't gotten to endo-dontists, prosthyio-dontists and
perio-dontists you've either flossed regularly or haven't
gritted your teeth at work enough) - back to the sentence
- I walk over to a big freakin' eucalyptus tree on the edge
of the parking lot and study where a badly pruned branch
has regenerated into two very large, very heavy, side
by side, almost vertical branches. The weight of the
branches has created a massive upside down shoulder
at the trunk of the tree - the lower part wrinkled all
to hell and bulging out like The Rock - on steroids - trying
and barely succeeding to not be crushed or wripped apart
by all the weight it's supporting (compression wood). And,
as I look at that joint I think about how the wood above it
at the trunk is being stretched trying to hold up the
heavy branches (tension wood). I just know there's
a pony in all that horse**** - or rather some really
interesting grain figure in that part of the tree. If and
when it has to come off or the tree has to come down
I WANT THAT PIECE!

Go to a plant nursery and look at the leaves of things -
irisis and other bulb plants create nice curving lines.

If you rake leaves, or your neighbor does, take a little
time to check out lines in the outline of some leaves,
or the vein patterns in them. Might be a great idea
lurking there, waiting to be discovered - and used - or
not.

Pick up a copy of Playbor - not for the articles and
the interview, but for the pictures! Use that part of
your body ABOVE your waist line - your brain to
look for nice shapes - THAT MIGHT BE AN IDEA FOR
A BOWL OR VASE OR PLATTER. (Supposedly, the shape
of what we all recognize as a champagne glass was
inspired by one of Marie Antoinette's breasts. How
an artist could let that be known without losing his
head is not clear though)

There are shapes and forms all around you. Take some
time to really look and you'll be surprised how many ideas
will come to you - if you make just a little effort.

Another "trick" is to use what initially seems like a negative /
barrier and use it rather than avoid it. Good case in point,
the piece currently on the lathe, a 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" x 7" almost
square
blank - a couple of inches of one corner being triangular
waney/wainy (the outside of the log, below the cambian layer
that's lumpy, bumpy and, in this case, almost black) "imperfection".
I'm on a "turned lidded boxes" jag - Christmas presents for
family and friends.

As I started roughing the "imperfect square" to round, working
from the ends towards the middle, I noticed that the triangular
"imperfection" was interesting so I tried to save some of it.
It soon came to me that my buddy's son, a volley ball junior
olympian, was recovering form a shoulder injury that jeapordized
his college scholarship, to say nothing of his passion for the
sport. Blank with a potentially bad "shoulder" - volley ball
nut . . . hmmm. Didn't take much to start changing the piece
to imply a torso - hips to shoulders to neck - with a shoulder
that wasn't quite "normal" - but worked.

A potential problem worked around to become a feature - a
trick most woodworkers develop over time - That's not a screw
up - it's a FEATURE! or How do a use this screw up by changing
my original design idea? I'm certain the symbolism in this
piece won't be lost on Sam and I know he'll appreciate the piece
more than he would if I'd done a more traditional lidded box for
him.

Here's another "inspiration" trick - take off your glasses
or, if you don't wear glasses, just squint and look at things.
This will reduce the distractions of details, leaving just
the big feature(s) - lighter/darker, general size and shape,
and make the outline of things more apparent with fewer
adjacent distractions. Don't look for anything specificly
- just look. Things will get into your subconscious and
sometimes pop out when triggered by sometgubg else -
like a chunk of wood, or picking up a gouge or chisel.

Get your ego to go on vacation and get out of the way
of the rest of you and your abilities. "I , Me, My/Mine"
have a tendency to be risk aversion specialists. If
I don't try - then I can't FAIL! (oh fate worse than death).
But if you take risks and fail, assuming it's not in fact
a fatal failure, the world doesn't end, you don't die and
most of the time, your learn something more valuable
than if you'd succeeded the first time.

Had enough?

charlie b