- I hear many people, musicians, writers, dancers, talk about the flow.

You try to get to that point.

I know even me, myself, sometimes I'll sharpen the tools, prepare the spaces we eat.

We do many things just trying to wait for that flow to come, but in the process of starting to work, that's usually what I'm looking for is that point in time when you're working and you're not aware of time or if you're hungry or if it's raining or snowing, it's just a flow, a flow.

(calm music) I think people get stuck when they're about to create something, that they tighten up inside or in the mind or in the body itself.

It mainly, sometimes it comes from maybe wanting to be too good or too perfect instead of letting it flow.

How do you get the imagination going when you're blocked or difficult getting started?

And there's many ways to do that.

One of the ways that I was taught and I found very effective that I passed on to many of my students is a peephole technique.

So I know the language of line, form, design, texture, balance, and painting, horizontal, vertical, but getting an idea, and what I've actually done was to go to an old magazine and just begin to look at it in a different way, and when I said peephole, I've cut a rectangular shape out and blocked off the rest, and then I've taken a piece of an old magazine and I sort of placed that down, and what I do, I begin to focus, and knowing line, design, texture, composition, I began to look at those elements of art as I slowly moved this peephole around the surface.

Student at almost any age or artists that I've had a chance to work with, particularly in the area of what we call overcoming that creative block or getting those things to flow, I've used a variety of ways, but main thing is to try to get someone to get out of the ordinary.

By blocking out the rest, I've composed a space that I'm looking at, that I can then read the element of line, design, texture, balance, color, and looking now for something that's visually interesting, that might stimulate me for an idea, even though the painting or the drawing may be realistic, but this is the starting point.

And if I find something I like or that is interesting that I want to explore, I can lock it by taping it down.

When the flow is not there and it's not quite working, I will just sort of look rather than physically work, and a lot of times, when I'm working on something, someone walking by me think, boy, he's just wasting time.

He's just sitting there looking, and what I'm doing is going over the entire piece with my eyes in a slow motion and looking at every aspect of it and just letting it come in and see if it's feeling right.

Does it feel like it's going in the right direction?

All these options are possibilities that may be made more appealing by the material or the technique I decide to use.

Painting is different than a drawing.

A drawing's different than a bas relief or clay or wood or metal, but I've made some decisions that may help me determine what I'm going to do.

So this may be a public art piece that's gonna be four feet by four feet, eight feet by eight feet.

It could be acrylic, it could be oil, it could be mixed media, or it could be a big mess of material.

It could be actual fabric.

So I'm using that peephole idea and freedom of expression as a way to start what I would call a very free, expressive landscape.

That I have having looked, having read, having felt the peephole concept, and now executed into the drawing or painting.

So I'm building upon that idea with the freedom of seeing how the lines move, the texture moves, the shape moves.

That's part of the fun for me.

is finding the way to let the creativity flow through you.

'cause you want always for it to be as positive an experience for you as well as the piece that you're making.