pLAying: exploring imagination

Getting out of your home and your routine helps foster creativity. At least that is how it works for me. I took off for a brief trip to LA six days ago for a book event and to catch up with one of my childhood best friends. I also knew that I needed to have "fun" and break the stranglehold of stress that had been permeating my life. I brought a pouch of multi-colored pencils and a Japanese brush pen.

The brush pen immediately spoke to me and said: I am the calligraphy of palm trees. You are in LA. You need to pLAy... so I began pLAying with palm imagery and the LA or in some cases, CA (for California) sound.

The journey began with an "imaginary LAndscape." And then it started to get surreal.

The multi-color leads led to fantastic color possibilities.

The thesaurus helped me name this one, "ObLAtion"- or offering.

I love to pLAy ukulele... and so does my friend Judy's step-daughter, Alice. I was staying in their home, so I drew another version of this and gave it to Alice.

Judy's other step-daughter, Emma is making a documentary on the Pantone color system. So I drew this for her. I used to work with Pantone all the time when I was a graphic designer.

After three and a half days in LA I was on the plane headed home... and sketched the whole way.

I had been in LA for the "A Letter to My Cat" private book launch party. I contributed a letter to the book. Cats were on my mind, and I missed my dear kitty, Marley. This is a "CAt"- a California cat.

As we flew further away, palm trees were receding in my thoughts, so I started playing with other things- taking names like "cock tail" literally.

But the palm trees came back once more as I thought about the delicious uni Judy and I shared at The Hungry Cat restaurant the night before. 

As we flew over the Cascade Mountains towards Washington I thought about our pine trees and our amazing apples...

...and as we began our descent into the Seattle area, head still in the clouds, I put my pencils and pen away knowing that this journey was over, but the journey of imagination would never end.

Wherever you go- in reality, or in your imagination, I hope you have a great trip!

With Love, 

Nina