Where to get ideas

Illustration: Carla Haslbauer
Text: Bettina Obrecht

Where to get ideas

Ideas are everywhere around us!

But how to find one when we need it? Why do some people just bubble with funny, wise thoughts, while others have a hard time coming up with just a single good idea?

Bettina Obrecht and Carla Haslbauer have the answer: Their manifesto, an imaginative, tender collage, is a rhymed manual for anyone collecting ideas – equally directed at a young and adult readership.

They whisper in an ancient wall
They are the noise when rain does fall
I see them cross the skies so blue,
hear them in songs, in every tune.
I smell them in the gale from East
and taste them in a candy feast.
They flutter out of yellowed books
They are big things with small-thing looks

Carla Haslbauer: »Where did I get the ideas for these illustrations? I just rode the wave of Bettina Obrecht’s writing, on my way to work, to the supermarket, past the garden, the Rhine, and the crammed busses, and finally, at the studio.
I also thought about what it was like on my way to school as a child. When we move around observing the world around us there is a lot to discover, and reality can be pretty magical. Combining watercolor, colored pencil, and collage (using things like garbage) I found more waves to ride as colors, scraps, and bits of garbage carried me this way or that. No digital art here, it was all nice and traditional.«

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