The School → Better Art

How can the three actions of the Online School Of The Spirit improve your art?  I’m listing a few ways here, but you’ll come up with more.

Soaking Will Improve Your Art

First, soaking is engaging with God.  The very process of spending time with Him will cultivate the sort of relationship in which He can pour inspiration into your life.

You will get ideas as you soak:  maybe the whole idea for your next project, or perhaps a new technique to explore.  These ideas will bring out the best in your God-given talents. Sometimes God will speak directly and sometimes in parables designed to make you think.

You will sense God’s presence as you soak.  Sometimes you’ll be led to work in His presence, and will find a spontaneous flow of creativity in your work.

How Encouraging Helps

There is a side of Jesus you’ll never see unless you get involved with people.  A wealth of inspiration is waiting for you as you encourage the least of His people.  As the parable of the sheep and the goats teaches, the way we treat people is the way we treat Jesus Himself.  (See Matthew 25:31-46.)

I call it the principle of the Complete Circuit.  Soaking hooks us up with God the power source, but we need to follow through by connecting with needy people.  Ministry to others will get you into a deeper flow of the Holy Spirit, which in turn will enlarge your heart.

From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks – and the singer sings, the painter paints, and the dancer dances.  If your heart is enlarged to contain more of God, it will spill out in your art, whatever the medium.

Why Bother With Journaling

Among other things, your journal will be an idea file.  God will show you things that will inform your art.

Keep a list of testimonies.  Record the new things God is teaching you and showing you.  It will encourage you to look back over the list from time to time, and one day you may have an opportunity to share your experiences as a Christian artist.  Your testimonies about receiving ideas from God will encourage others, and the principles you share will inspire people who are serving God in other marketplace ministries.

You’ll Find More

You will find more benefits – more ways your art improves – from soaking 2-3 times a week, encouraging five people a week, and keeping a written record.  Post your own stories as comments here; your stories will help train other Christian artists all over the world.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Reach For Better Art

If you let the Holy Spirit teach you, He will bring out depths of artistic creativity you can’t access any other way.  This isn’t theory; I have tasted it myself in three branches of the arts: worship music, graphic arts, and writing.

So as I list ways God can inspire you to better artistic output, I’ll build the list around things God has given me.  The principles work in one medium as well as another, and I’m sure you’ll find things in this list that speak to you.  But you will also come up with things that aren’t in this list as you look to God for inspiration.

The design for a specific project.

Sometimes God will show us what to produce.  He might give us the whole work at once, or just a part that we then have to develop.  Either way, He is inspiring a specific work for a specific purpose.

It can be “seeing” a layout, then using the tools to produce it.  It can be “hearing” a song and getting up in front of people to sing it.

Or it can happen when a piece of writing isn’t coming together; suddenly God shows an anecdote that ties the loose ends together and makes the writing easy to understand and hard to forget.

A new technique.

Sometimes God will show us how to produce.  He teaches us new techniques, giving us more tools to use in the future.

With graphics, God has challenged me to learn to use layers.  It’s what PhotoShop is all about, and though I haven’t mastered it yet, the principles have spilled over into my music and writing.

With music, He has given me several techniques to explore:  play two chords at once; get my left and right hands to carry on a conversation on the keyboard; avoid monotony by mixing musical textures in each song.  These all are musical versions of the layering process in graphics.

With writing, I’m working on a testimony book that demands that I use fiction techniques.  Again, I’m learning to layer.  For instance, whenever I describe a character, I list the physical traits that expose a motive or an action.  This keeps the story moving.  Scenery likewise is not just a background but part of what the characters are thinking and feeling.  Even similes and metaphors should advance the action.

A spontaneous flow of output

Sometimes Christ in us will produce through us.  There are moments when the song seems to sing itself, the picture paints itself, the story tells itself.

There is a psychological reason for this.  You may have read Flow by Csikszentmihalyi; he has studied the joy of creativity, and the flow he talks about is something the saved and the unsaved can both experience.

But if Christ lives in you, the flow of His Spirit will add a kingdom dimension to your creativity.  In one way or another, Jesus will leave His fingerprint on your work.  I’ve given an unusual example of this principle in another article, CD Cover – From Above.

Your turn…

These are just a few examples.  I could give more, but mine are important only as samples of what you can expect God to do in your own art.  As He gives you new ideas, post your own stories as comments and tell us how His inspiration has improved your art.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com