Friday, September 11, 2009

Structure in Art

In my old blog, I pointed to game designer Mark Rosewater as an unlikely source of artistic wisdom.  Though I haven't kept up with his writing over the past few years, the main point I originally took from him is still as relevant - structure helps creativity.  This seems counter-intuitive, but I've found it to be true. Tom Shear of Assemblage 23 recently mentioned in his blog that having fewer options makes him more productive, in that he has fewer opportunities to get distracted.

Not to get too terribly meta, but I think my previous post is a perfect example of structure aiding creativity. Ordinarily, a games-centric convention wouldn't be relevant to an arts blog.  Further, it would have been very time-consuming for me to filter out interesting bits of the con into a general-purpose post, and it probably wouldn't have been particularly cohesive to read.  The stated purpose of this blog forced me to focus on a few aspects of my convention experience, and I was able to quickly (relatively) write up a pertinent post.  In fact, this is the primary reason I started this new blog, rather than reviving the old one.

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