Part 2: Spider Diagrams

In this exercise I had to explore four words; creating a mind-map for each. The four words are Seaside, Childhood, Angry and Festival.
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The first word I explored was Seaside. I found this a pleasurable and fun activity and the associations kept flying into my mind.  I couldn't resist adding a few little drawings and images to bring the mind-map to life a little more:

Next - Childhood. A more difficult brainstorm compared to seaside; the word associations were more difficult to bring to mind. Perhaps the main difference between seaside and childhood is the nature of the words.  With seaside visualisation, there are lots of "stuff" and "things". Plenty of nouns. 

However, with childhood, there are more complex visual associations and words produced.  More adjectives for sure.  And perhaps this is why the childhood spider diagram has a different feel to me compared to the seaside one.

However, overall I'm fairly pleased with the outcome as a mind map: 

For this next diagram (angry), I wanted to take a different approach to match the keyword. I set out to produce this diagram very fast - my brainstorming was almost frantic. I tried to summon up as much emotion as possible in order to try and get the moods and associations down:  

Festival:- The hardest to bring to mind the associations and links. The reason for this is perhaps I haven't been to many festivals, so my experiences were more limited for the brainstorm.

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Overall, I've found this to be a creative and fun activity; underlining the practical benefit in brainstorming and mind-mapping as part of the creative/ideas generation process of producing illustrations.  I'm now especially mindful of how important the keywords brainstorming activity was part of the Getting the Gist exercise.

The exercise also suggested that I ask other people to suggest extra words and to contribute to the brainstorming. I tried this:- I asked my partner along the way to contribute. A few extra keywords were added to my diagram.

But being frank it seemed to slow me down and inhibit my reverie and creative thinking process.  The talking and the explaining were a hindrance to me. Perhaps collaborating with others on the brainstorming process doesn't suit me?  Perhaps this technique works best for me as a solo exercise?


And finally...
Couldn't resist drawing a spider in my sketchbook where I'd pasted my diagrams:


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