(July 11, 2012 at 12:30 pm)Rhizomorph13 Wrote:(July 11, 2012 at 12:25 pm)jonb Wrote: No don't worry about an active imagination encourage it, it's a fabulous thing to have!
Well, yes and no. If he is just being imaginative while still doing what he needs to do, then I'm all for it. It is when it interferes with his tasks that I have a problem. You see, I need to prepare him for the real world, and most people don't get to daydream AND make a living.
I was really imaginitive when I was a child too, and I feel that much of my potential was wasted because of fanciful ideas. I certainly don't plan to stomp out his imagination, just aim it in a useful direction.
That answer gives me the heebygebes (sorry I'm dyslexic and can't find the word on spell check).
Real world, if you mean by that earning money, the only way to earn big money is to enjoy what you are doing, because then you will want to put the work in. Do you know how big the design industry is? For instance there are about three times as many people in advertising in London as there are Black cab drivers. It is hart to get into creative jobs true, but if you have the gumption and the perspiration It can pay dividends, But even If you are not going into a 'creative field' most industries cry out for people with a bit of gumption an ability to see what others have not spotted. That takes imagination, and a lot of the problems encountered at the moment are not a lack of willingness to work hard, it is the inability to see alternative ways of getting the job done.
I'm the third or forth generation of my family to be in art, and I saw my kids had excellent talents that would work for them in the field, but neither wanted to go in that direction. Its far more important that they are happy than that I force them into directions that I might wish for. Your kids will build up their own experiences, they are not about the fight you won or lost in your childhood.
Guide them in a useful direction?
At a studio I worked for 30 years ago there was a junior who sat in the corner and wasted all his time drawing silly pictures what he called muggers. Allen our rep walked in one day and said you'll never guess what I've got.
It was a commission for fifty illustrations of teenagers fighting, but they must look like they had been drawn by a teenager.
In the end that kid bought a house outright with no mortgage, from that commission and the work that ensued from it.
No I've never been that lucky, but you don't hedge in what an individual may have you add to it, work with it encourage its full potential, get his imagination working. We have been evolved to have an imagination it is the most useful tool we have.
