“All children are artists,” Pablo Picasso famously said. “The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
As adults, I think we often forget how creative we are, and were. I taught a cartooning class last year to my daughter’s second grade class. When I asked the class who liked to be creative, every single kid raised their hand … enthusiastically.
I was reminded of this when I taught a series of doodling workshops at the Do Lectures a couple weeks ago in Wales. Doodling is the simplest form of prototyping and idea exchange. People kept coming up to me before each class to warn me that they couldn’t draw and weren’t very creative.
We rolled out a huge sheet of butcher paper and, with a couple lessons and a little coaxing, everyone really got into it (even the ones who doubted themselves). Attendees have been sending me their doodles ever since, including this wonderful sketch note from attorney and author Neil Denny.
As Hugh Macleod once said, “we were all given the same box of crayons in kindergarten”. Yet somewhere along the line, many of us convinced ourselves that we’re not creative, particularly in a business context. That thinking limits our full potential.
Rediscovering how to doodle is one of the quickest routes to unblock creativity. My friend Sunni Brown gave this wonderful talk at TED on the power of doodling, which came out last week.
(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment by 5:00 PST on Monday. Thanks!)