Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.-Mark Twain

Let's start with the most basic of basic. Where every major artist has begun at some point in their career, where the joy is. Doodling.

Buy one of these books and it will change your life. I found this one online at Jo Ann Fabric and Craft store but any craft store you go to will have one. Heck, even Walmart has them. You can carry a small one in your purse for brilliant strokes of genius or for passing time.

Now many people are skeptics, so I thought I'd aid this group by providing some facts. If nothing else, they are things to spat back at your boss when he catches you doodling during a meeting.

In a study done using a boring phone message, the group who doodled while listening scored 29% better on recalling the message. (http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090226-doodling-good.html) The point of course being that doodling relieves the part of brain that searches for greener pastures when bored.

If that's not enough to make you pick up the pad, doodling also helps reveal whats going on in our brains through the symbols we chose to doodle. There are entire groups of psychiatrists that study images that people doodle! (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/13/the_odd_body_doodling/)

For the creative mind, I have to speak from experience. It is in my most bored moments that I come up with the best ideas. I don't know if there is any science to back up this claim, but it is when my mind is too bored with reality that it seems to want to really and truly, create.

It was from a doodle I did in a 7:30 a.m. History class that I got the entire idea for the painting on the top of the page.