Category: Creativity

I have long been inspired by Newspaper Blackout poems, made famous by Austin Kleon. I have read enough of them to see the potential they have to develop your ability to connect words in a different way.

Austin uses old newspapers to create poetry by redacting newspaper articles with a permanent marker, leaving only a few words behind which he calls “as if the C.I.A. is doing haiku.”

“Essentially, I destroy someone else’s intellectual property to create something new,” is his take about it but the activity has created such a fervor that Austin had to create a site solely dedicated to blackout poems where anyone can post their blackout poem.

In a recent bout of creativity, I tried doing the same but the newspaper’s dry language didn’t inspire me. I could hardly find nuggets in the news. Books on the other hand always have beautiful phrases worth keeping. So I thought why not use books to create Blackout poems.

I pulled out the books that were sitting in the back of my car, on their way to the donation bin (I have discovered if things stay in the book of my car for too long they tend to make their way back inside my house).

So, in they come and I picked one book and tried. There it was, a poem on the very first page.

The next was equally easy.

I am reluctant to let go of books anyway. Now I have found another reason to keep them.

Here in this video, Austin shows how to make those poems.

The rules are easy. Here they are in Austin’s own words:

• I try to disfigure the original article in such a way that the resulting poem has no resemblance to the original subject matter, or if it does, it parodies or reverses that subject matter.
• The more “nonfiction” and mundane the section the better the transformation. (Although, the sports section tends to be the most filled with everyday speech and metaphors, therefore the easiest.)
• The fewer words I use from the original, and the more I chop them up, the more the poem sounds like me.
• The blackouts are not a degradation of the newspaper, but a celebration. Several savvy newspapers have recognized this, running their own blackout poetry contests in which they encourage readers to buy a Sunday edition and try their own.

Happy poetry!

Of all the places, I found a scrapbook at Qanta’s International airport lounge in Sydney.

Not any scrapbook, but The 1950s Scrapbook compiled by Robert Opie. It was interesting to see how far we have come in 70 years.

After the rations during the war, food started to come in abundance.

Men, who were fighting for years, were building houses and making furniture.

I wonder what the people in seventy years from today will think about the life in the 2020s.

It will be worth making a scrapbook for them.

In Japanese esoteric Buddhist practice, the mandala aids meditation, promoting spiritual awareness and understanding.

Albert Yonathan Setyawan is an artist from Bandung, West Java, Indonesia who creates mandalas with slipcasts.

Setyawan replaced the five Wisdom Buddhas of the mandala with upper parts of five religious structures: mosque, church, temple stupa and ziggurat.

In my recent visit to the National Art Gallery of Australia, I was mesmerized by his monumental ceramic floor installation called Shelters which is comprised of 1890 terracotta ceramic components meticulously placed in a grid referencing the Kongokai mandala.

Setyawan’s art represents the mixture of faiths, cultures, and ethnicities that surrounded him growing up in Indonesia and the occasional religious and political conflicts he witnessed. The repeated patterns evoke mantras and sequences inherent in nature.

More than an arrangement of decorative elements, Setyawan’s ‘exalted aggregations’ instill a meditative focus and call on our interpretation of and desire to map the order of the universe.  

His other exhibits are equally impressive. A quick search on Google images gives the vast array of his artwork.

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Still young, having just finished his Post-graduate degree in arts and working towards his Ph.D. in Contemporary Ceramic Art, his work has been exhibited in Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Italy. A lot more is expected of him in the coming years and decades.

I collect travel brochures.

I have a box full of brochures from my past travels which I can’t bring myself to throw out.

I am particularly attached to the maps because we clung to those while finding our way through unfamiliar cities.

For some time, I have been looking for ways to use them in such a way that they bring back memories associated with those places.

Lately, I have been watching travel journals that some very creative people are sharing on Pinterest and Instagram and I am hooked.

They are not that easy to make and are extensively time-consuming.

But I decided to give it a go.

The picture at the top is my first attempt to journal a trip to Cairns in July 2017. It is obvious I need to work a lot on lettering.

Here are the maps, which are now forever preserved in the journal.

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For the last ten days, I have been drawing Mater Ping Xiao Po of the movie Kung Fu Panda in the cartoon drawing course I have been doing since August this year.

After a week of drawing just circles, we moved on to animals (pig, hippopotamus, dog, and teddy bear) and then spent four weeks on Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Sally, and Linus. Although the initial days were challenging but spending a month on Peanuts’ characters brought me to the comfort zone.

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Ping Po was a challenge. For a start, he was a 3D character with no distinct lines like Snoopy or Charlie and his friends. A lot of facial features were depicted by shading. And each figure had different facial expressions which I was not able to replicate. After day three, I was a lot behind the other participants who were posting proportionate and expressive Po on Instagram.

Then Master Ping Xiao P himself came to the rescue and taught me his three favorite lessons.

Believe in yourself he said.

If you want to succeed then don’t compare yourself to others. You have to make your own journey, getting disheartened by others’ progress will not make you any better. I got his message. Rather than giving up and going back to my comfort zone, I slowed down.

There is no secret ingredient, it’s you.

There is no shortcut, no secret recipe just plain hard work, and focus. It’s you and the hard work that will help you grow and learn. Nothing you can achieve overnight and gain mastery in.

I focused first just on the face, getting the muzzle right. Eyes were next, I was able to align them so that they looked in the same direction.

Anything is possible when you have inner peace.

Ping Po said in Master Oogway’s voice, “Your mind is like this water, my friend. When it gets agitated, it becomes difficult to see. But if you allow it to settle, the answer becomes clear.”

Slowing down allowed me to see the alignment of the eyes and head better. I started shading around the muzzle and the side of the face. The result was remarkable.

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Sticking with the Po, for two weeks, drawing each day without giving up was a lesson that nothing beats daily practice. I only spend half an hour on the drawing each day, sometimes I even break it up in two sessions of fifteen minutes each.

I need to do the same with blogging. It is easier to write a blog post every day and then twice or three times a week. Improvement will be worth the effort.