Creativity Spark

Brought to you by crayons and my non-dominant hand

This piece is a little different from what I usually share, and I felt a bit hesitant to post it. But the exercise described below did something wonderful: it woke up my creativity when it had been feeling a bit stuck. Once I got through the initial discomfort, the experience gained momentum. I hope you’ll read on to see where it led.

My friend Sammi, who writes Present Word Travels, recently sent me a creative exercise she published about a year ago. It involves drawing a soul shape with the non-dominant hand while not looking at the paper, then writing about the drawing. Following the prompts, I drew the following with my large box of crayons:

Original drawing by Beth Kardong’s left hand while blindfolded

My Writing - in response to the drawing

Today, I feel like my soul contains many parts. It begins with flame: rising, flickering, reaching upward. What I thought was dangerous desire is made up mostly of heart. Bare, exposed, with hints of passion squiggling through gold and silver shimmers, a barely visible backdrop to a foreground of riotous shape.

The background is calm, steady. It shields the heart. The flame-heart arises from a pool of wonder: blended blues intermingling, forming something new. Fire comes from water, inexplicably.

A solid base below the pool contributes steadiness, minerals infusing water and water depositing sand as it wears away old assumptions and rigid stone rules, washes away black spots and bruises left from family wounds. Inadvertent, unavoidable, but decidedly PAST, they are a part of the fire-stew, as necessary as air. Bubbles - purple - effervesce to move air from earth though water into fuel for fire.

A hint of green at the edges unites the layers. Cool and untouched by flame, it will shade and moderate; a privacy hedge for the soul to blend, mingle, mix, grow, burn, bluster, flow, experiment in safe solitude. But the hedge is permeable. It is not rigid. Loved ones can overlap, enter, exit, inform, reach, teach, learn, play, sing, listen, embrace.

The image looks both childish and profound, imagined and real. Sharp and fiery to the left, rounded and ethereal to the right.

My Reaction - in response to both

When I finished writing, I had the urge to reflect on the experience as a whole. The act of closed-eye left-handed drawing felt awkward and vulnerable. But there were moments of freedom when I felt movement and texture without the pressure of trying to control the visual outcome. I could feel my entire body shifting with the fingers, hand, arm, crayon. As I wrote the words in my notebook immediately after drawing, my right hand felt clumsy. Part of me felt embarrassed looking at the drawing and labeled it “childish scribbles”. I let that initial thought go and returned to just observing. Sitting on my deck, I heard leaves rustling, birds singing. I smelled a hint of incense, felt cool air on my skin, tingling in my toes. I went on about my day feeling lighter. I’ve been feeling more pull toward writing in the days since I tried this.

Now what?

Want to try it yourself? Here’s a link to Sammi’s instructions for this exercise:

Stuck in Writing? Paint Your Way Through

If you do give it a try, I’d love to hear what emerges for you, whether it is a scribble, a poem, or something else.

-Beth