✏️ TREE 142: Delightful unexpected surprises

We love delightful unexpected surprises – a good plot twist, a remarkable drum fill, a new flavour combination.

Good surprises are hard to think of.

Drawing is a really easy way to practice. Draw a man’s head on a cat’s body. Give a bird 16 legs. Create a skateboarding flower. Make a habit of drawing odd juxtapositions and at least three things will happen:

1. You will make yourself laugh sometimes

2. You will do some drawings that are actually clever

3. You will train your brain to think of delightful unexpected surprises

Then you can apply that thinking to whatever you do –
knitting patterns,
ceramics,
music,
presentations,
writing,
design,
product creation,
plumbing,
parenting –
anything!

Second drawing

Try not to read ahead on this one. Do each step before looking at the next one. It’s more fun this way.

1. Draw a hand, a nice big one. Don’t think about it. Just draw a hand, quickly.

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2. Draw a beak on the hand. 

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3. Now draw flames coming out of the beak.

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4. Give the hand an eye, or a few eyes, or 50 eyes. Keep adding eyes until you think it has enough.

Ridiculous! But fun right? And a very useful bit of brain training.

The very excellent smiley faces at the top of this email are from Anna D. I can’t wait to see your creations today. Please send them in!

Draw daily.
Jeff

This delightful unexpected surprise appeared on Radio 1 this evening while I was driving from the Wirral to Conwy:

The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email: