Ricky's "6 Learning Tools"
Skills that make your creativity blossom and grow.
You will use them forever,
in everything that you do!

1. Practice the five C's of Creativity: Collect, Crop, Change, Combine, Connect

• images
• ideas
• design elements
  
• text
  
• materials
  
• tools
  

2. Design Personal Tutorials: Copy, Play, Experiment, Translate, Apply Design

• Watch my demo to see how I ask & answer MY questions
  
• Create your own tutorial to answer YOUR questions
• Practice the different tutorial styles to answer different types of questions
  
• These are the types of tutorials that all artists use in their own studios as they learn new techniques & design their artwork!
  

3. Brainstorm: Search for MORE, instead of GOOD

• let go of searching for the one "right answer"
  
• Stop judging: it will stop you in your tracks!
  
• Move past your first "good idea".
• Aim for at least 10 to move you beyond the obvious.
• Have fun. Be silly. Relax
  

 4. Ask Yourself Questions/ Brainstorm Questions

• Explore different types of Questions: Technical, Artistic, & Personal
• Move beyond the "How do I do it?" questions
• Enter into a dialogue with your piece
• Have a conversation with yourself
  
• Use open-ended and closed-ended questions
  
• Change the point of view of the questions
  

5. Evaluate & Critique: Change your Questions from "Do I like it" to "What do I SEE"?

• What can I change?
  
• What does it remind me of?
• How could I do it differently?
• Where does my eye go? Why?
• What did I do?

6. Thumbnails Sketches: Remove fear & preciousness from your drawings

• Make simple "recordings" of your ideas
  
• Use simple one & two line sketches
  
• Crop and image and then sketch it
  
• Create variations of your thumbnail sketches
  
• Add value & color
  
• Create a plan to translate into enamel