When I was in grad school, I took a class on creative visualization. I had no clue what creative visualization meant at the time, and the class seemed to me just an endless string of silly exercises.

Twenty years later, I understand perfectly well that not everyone truly sees the same way when they look at things. Those silly exercises help develop the skills to look at everyday items in a creative way, which is something we all need help with occasionally.

What Is Creative Visualization?

When I was writing about miniatures for About.com, I used to do a weekly chat session. I started playing a game called What Goes In This Room. I asked the mini enthusiasts to picture themselves in a specific place—say, a Chinese restaurant. Then, I’d go through a series of questions. I’d ask what they saw on the walls, and they’d all type their answers in as fast as they could, since part of the game was to answer without too much thought. I’d ask what color the walls were, and how they were treated—paint or wallpaper? How are the walls decorated? If there’s artwork, how is it framed? Each person would just type in her answers. When I got to the end of my list of questions, I’d copy the whole chat session, and compile those answers into one big list, as a sort of prompt sheet for anyone who was doing a miniature Chinese restaurant scene. Although my goal with the exercise was usually to come up with a new piece to post on the site that week, there was a secondary goal: to teach the folks in chat how to imagine their miniature scenes, step by step, piece by piece. By taking apart the room into small sections, and asking very specific questions, I was helping them learn to mentally design their scene in small, managable steps before they started working.

That’s creative visualization.

Right Brain vs. Left Brain

I’m sure most of you have heard the theory that the two halves of our brains control two completely different types of thinking. In general, the left brain is logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective, and looks at parts. The right brain is random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing, subjective and looks at wholes.

Most of us have a distinct preference for working on one side of our brain or the other, and sometimes, we get stuck on our favorite side. However, there are skills on both sides that are useful when solving problems or creating artwork—and creative visualization exercises seek to help us easily jump from one side of our brain to the other. The goal is to train our thought process to solve problems using both halves of our brains.

How does the What Goes In This Room game work? On the surface, it appears to be just some fun chat session game—sort of an ice breaker. It’s really switching the people playing the game from their right brain, which looks at their miniture scene as a whole, to their left brain, which looks at it in parts. There’s a theory that switching back and forth, from left brain to right brain and back again, builds pathways in the brain. I’m not sure how that works, but I do know that after twenty years of playing creative visualization games with my teachers, my classmates, my friends, and my students, that switching comes smoothly and naturally for me.

Playing the Games

While there are all types of creative visualization exercises, most of them are designed to be used in a group setting, or with a partner. These are a few you can do alone:

Walk though a store outside your expertise. For some of us, that’s a kitchen and bath store. For others, a hardware store. Maybe yours is a plant nursery, or an antique store. Look at everything—pick things up, turn them over. Don’t read the labels or tags, and don’t try to figure out what things really are. Try to see what they could be. Is this something left behind by an alien civilization? Sent forward a few centuries by a time machine? Don’t look at any one thing for too long—and if it doesn’t speak to you, put it down and pick up the next thing. (Actually, this game is also fun to play with a friend, but she has to be someone who already knows you’re insane.)

Open a dictionary and randomly select a word. Start developing ideas based on this word, or incorporating this word. Are there colors or icons associated with this word? Let your mind wander with this word, and see where it takes you. Sometimes, I go ahead and do a piece of artwork based on what I’ve imagined. Other times, I might just write down what I’ve been thinking.

I know you’ve played this one before: pick a person. Maybe someone you know, maybe a celebrity. Now, if this person was a car, what would he or she be? What fruit? What hairstyle? What color? What sound? What day of the week? What state? What country? What song? Silly, but a good exercise. Play this when you’re stuck in traffic.

Turn things upside-down. I do this when I’m working on throw-away collages, and it forces me to stop seeing my junk mail as ads, and start seeing it as colors, shapes and textures. This works for just about everything. When you get stuck on a project, hold it upside-down. Seriously. Flip it over, and keep it flipped over. Maybe work on it upside-down for a while, or maybe just look at it until you feel your answer come to you. I use this one unconsciously all the time—when I’m trying to figure something out at the office, sometimes I’ll turn whatever I’m working on upside-down (which annoys the heck out of my coworkers). All I can say is thank goodness I’m not a tank mechanic.