Stop Drawing Stick People
By Beck Tench (10ch)
At what age did you start drawing stick people? Drawing your first stick person is kind of like the opposite of the first time you stood up to walk. Rather than progress from rolling to sliding to crawling to walking, you regress from drawing (or attempting to draw) the way you see things to drawing stereotyped figures to drawing stick people.
Most psychologists agree that we draw stick figures because we lose confidence in our artistic ability at some age. Ok, no big deal. We’re not all artists. But notice – we don’t choose to draw stick people because we can’t draw…we do it because we aren’t confident. Go ahead and try it (skip the excuses) – draw a somewhat realistic person.
The same thing happens with sharing ideas. We become less confident in our answers, ideas, and writing – so we slow down. Blogs go unwritten, comments go unspoken, and excuses fill the void. We replace thought-provoking and creative blog posts with hot topic keywords to see if you can grab some search love for your mind-numbing posts that take an angle you were positive nobody had written. Here’s a free tip: “news” didn’t become a top trending topic on the internet until people started poking and prodding from every angle.
Rather than pushing the same idea you’ve tried with every campaign, dare to drop a new idea during brainstorming. If you’ve surrounded yourself with the right people, the idea is less likely to be shot down than it is to be transformed into a campaign worth talking about.
Stick figures don’t get any attention. Anybody can draw a stick figure. Your individual style is more intriguing. I’m not asking you to study realism and draw an anatomically correct human each time you try, I’m just asking you to expose your creativity. I’m not asking you to blow the world away with your innovative blog, I’m just asking you to write about different topics. I’m not asking you to have the best idea each time you brainstorm, I’m just asking you give everybody around you a chance to build something great.
Brainstorming is one of my favorite things in the world to do. You’ve really captured why in this post. The difficultly comes in turning that effective brainstorm into reality, into something of substance that actual generates results for your client.
Not quite as fun as brainstorming. Ha.
Great post.
Thanks for stopping by, Danny.
I’m right there with you on brainstorming. It can be a really fun experience if ideas flow naturally. That usually means without restraint to me.
Like you said, turning a brainstorm into reality is the difficult part. It becomes much easier if everybody is willing to participate unfiltered. There’s something to be said for taking the work out of brainstorming and saving the energy for implementation.
I once did an experiment in an gallery where I tried gauging a person’s confidence level with art. When asked, most people I talked to were willing to dance or sing a few bars of a song. However, when I introduced a piece of paper with pencil and asked for a drawing , I was greeted with frozen expressions. There wasn’t any expectations…a stick figure would have been welcomed! Something about the visual arts keeps people from making an attempt. Creating a drawing is such a simple and yet conceptual act. I have thought about that experiment many times over the years and is probably one reason why I make “stick figures” today. I’m for whatever will get people to make that initial attempt. I’m forever hopeful that for some, a creative spark will occur. Thanks for your post!
fantastic post. its so hard to DO it, especially if you are working with people that are older and don’t take you seriously.
dare to be different. just do it.
nice post scott
This was a fantastic read. Thanks for this.
You’re welcome – and thank you for stopping by and taking time to read and comment.