Life sucks all the fun out, right? Wrong. We suck the fun out because we want to act all grown up. I have seen a clear example at my home.
When my daughter started painting at three, her imagination was vivid and paintings slightly eccentric. All her animals had long flowing hair and nearly half wore a tiara. Even though they may not have all the body parts, they had personalities.
Her imagination used to fuel mine–the way she once questioned how we know for sure that little Johnny threw the cat in the well (Ding Dong Bell) made me question the rhyme itself. We only had Tommy’s word for it. A lot of her eccentric paintings fueled my stories.
But lately, she had been mimicking either You Tube characters or my realistic style of painting, never going out of her comfort zone.
Recently, when we were looking at her older paintings, she laughed at her younger-self for being silly while I had always been so proud. Her younger version was free to imagine; she had fun while painting and assumed she will be appreciated, no matter what. The newer one is conscious of social stigma and tries to blend in. While I love all she creates, she is not having fun anymore–expending too much thought and energy on making it realistic. She wasn’t happy with this dog she had created out of imagination, because “it wasn’t as real as mine”.
So today, I took matters in my hand. She is on a winter break right now and has plenty of time on her hands. I put her to cartooning. I think there is nothing like cartooning to bring the imagination out, especially if you are drawing animals. You will have to give them a character.
I gave her the basics by displaying her favourite Bluey characters and explaining their characteristics (dogs standing straight, rectangular body, over-large eyes, high bushy eyebrows, simplified body parts). I also explained how some of these features are used to give them a theme and others give them a human-like character.
Then I asked her think of a story with three animals and draw their characters in this fashion. She is already done with an elephant and a lion in a circus. She is having so much fun! Once done with the third character, her next task is to fashion them as “Pepe and the Big Wide World” characters (round, no body, stick legs, no hands, one with small triangles for wings, large round eyes, no nose–well, they are all birds). Soon I will get her started on a different style and keep going on for days, until she can create on her own like she did earlier, and not just copy.
The idea is to get her readjusted with the absurd and eccentric. She is laughing her head off and still excited at something new. She is sucking her life back in.
What do you do keep your imagination going when the world around you is trying to suck it out?
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 