Mind Maps

(book cover and title by dianne curtis / all rights reserved)

Being an Original Requires Effort

...a lot of effort! This is why so many artists get offended when work is ripped off. They see a copy of their image on someone's work and immediately visions and memories of all the effort they put into it floods their brain. It is much easier to use someone else's hard work instead of your own which is why plagiarism and copyright infringement is so popular but don't do it because stealing ideas has a toxic affect. It will make you lazy. It will slow you down. Soon, all you will be able to do is borrow ideas and that is only one step away from giving up on the art world altogether.
There is a better solution; make the effort fun. Make the effort involve part of the creative process. I even know artists who sell their rough sketches. In fact, many famous artists' rough sketches and layouts sell for millions. So you can make the journey worth your while by making the process as nice as the destination. Brainstorming can be a blast. There are many ways to brainstorm and I will try to list a couple of my favorites:
Mind maps are by far the funniest way to brainstorm. Start with a thought or idea in the center and look for relevance around the word. Use images and words to drum up memories of this word. No thought or image is too silly.
The illustrations shown here are examples of how I came up with a title for a book I wrote eight years ago for kids. I enjoyed every minute of the project: Can you see where my ideas evolved from the doodles and blurbs? This is only a fraction of the mind maps I created for the book.

This is only a fraction of the mind maps I created for the book:

 

 

and here are some of the finished inside pages: