Creativity in a pinch...

My wife and I had been debating about what to wear at a convention's Halloween party in a hotel 3 hours from home. We had forgotten to bring our costumes and neither one of us were happy about it. No point in driving home to get it, let alone visit Wal-Mart because we both knew that all the costumes were sold.

She suddenly had an idea and asked me how to turn that idea into reality. I listened to her carefully, interrupting occasionally to clarify what she meant...before I started brainstorming. I knew that despite the remote location of the hotel, I was bound to find something. I went off to look for a box big enough to fit me. Alas, it had rained all week here and all the boxes were wet & useless.

I had an eureka moment and I went to a gift shop. Sure enough, the shop had large blank posters for sale and I bought 4 of them along with certain markers and some glue. I went back to the room (my wife had left to attend more of the seminars at the convention) and I went to work. I googled for an image of a certain product and left the image up on my pager while I went to work.

Not an artist...or even somewhere in the neighborhood of having an ability to draw something more than stick figures, I decided that I would draw that image "upside down". I had read somewhere that when you draw something upside down, the logic part of your brain will give up and switch over to the creative part of your brain. Here goes nothing. I got the size of that canister down just right. I went to work on the girl in a raincoat, spilling something....and I got the rough look down...but how to do the spilling salt? You guessed it right...I was drawing Morton's Salt. I settled for dotting all along the spill path of the salt. Drew a little pile of salt. Done.

Then I went to work on my poster. Mine was far simpler...draw one line across the short side, about 2/3 of the way up, that's it...and color the bottom portion of the poster 2/3 black...and top portion 1/3 copper/light brown. Yep, I just made a poster for Duracell battery. What was the meaning of those two posters when pairing Morton's Salt and Duracell battery together? It took some people several minutes to figure it out while others got it right away. To help drive the point home, my wife's front poster showed a HUGE single letter of "A", paired with Morton's Salt poster on her back and I drew an ampersand on my front poster to go with the poster of Duracell battery on my back.

We won 1st prize for the most creative costume at the party, spelling out "Assault & Battery". ;)

Nolens Volens (NSFW)