Hayao Miyazaki and the date with the artist: the walk as creative fuel

The animator who draws the world because he looks at it

Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941 and is, for many people, the best animation director in history. With Studio Ghibli, founded in 1985 together with Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki, he signed films that crossed cultures: My neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away —Oscar winner—, The moving castle, The boy and the heron. Its world is instantly recognizable: living forests, immense skies, breathing creatures, food that makes you hungry just by looking at it.

Where does all that visual life come from? The answer, if one looks at how Miyazaki works, is not "from his imagination" in the magical sense. It comes from something much more concrete and much more imitable: of his habit of looking at the real world with almost obsessive attention.

Walk, look, notice the small

Miyazaki is known for his relationship with nature. He has a mountain house, he walks, he observes the seasons. In the documentary The kingdom of dreams and madness, who follows him during the production of a film, is constantly seen stopping to look: the movement of water, the flight of an insect, the shape of a cloud, how light falls between the trees. It does not look to "document"; Look because that is their way of being in the world and, incidentally, their way of recharging.

That patient observation is what later appears in his films turned into magic. When a Ghibli scene moves you because the wind "really" moves the grass, or because a character eats with a pleasure you can almost taste, you're seeing the result of years of Miyazaki noticing things that most people cross without seeing.

The appointment with the artist: going out to fill the well

Here comes Julia Cameron with one of her two star practices. Along with the morning pages, Cameron proposes the appointment with the artist: a weekly, solo outing dedicated to feeding your creativity with stimuli. It is not to produce anything. It is for receive: look, listen, smell, touch, be surprised. Cameron uses a beautiful metaphor to explain why it matters: your creativity is like a well, and every time you believe, you draw water from it. If you don't refill it, it dries out. The appointment with the artist is the way to fill it.

What Miyazaki does when he walks and observes is literally filling the well. Every insect he looks at, every cloud, every play of light, enters his inner reserve of images. Years later that reserve overflows and becomes a film. It is not a coincidence or a supernatural gift: it is the cumulative result of thousands of hours of sensory attention to the world. It is the appointment with the artist turned into a way of life.

Why haste kills creativity

There is a common enemy in Cameron's method and in Miyazaki's way of working, and it is called hurry. Miyazaki is famous for his slowness: he draws by hand frame by frame, resists digital shortcuts, and defends a Japanese concept, the ma —the emptiness, the pause, the silence between things—as an essential part of his films. His stories breathe because he allows himself the time to breathe.

Cameron would say that haste is precisely what empties the well without refilling it. Producing, producing, producing without stopping to receive new stimuli leads to exhaustion and creative block. The appointment with the artist is a deliberate act of slowness: one hour a week in which You don't produce anything and, paradoxically, that's when you're feeding the most for your future work..

Walking is not wasting time

Many creative people feel guilty when they "just" go out for a walk. It seems like time wasted compared to "productive" hours of work. Miyazaki proves the opposite with an entire career: The walk, the observation, the slowness, are not the opposite of creative work; They are a central part of it. The brain makes many of its best connections when walking, away from the screen. We have a whole article about this at walking as a creative practice.

Next time you're out wandering, remember Miyazaki stopping to look at a beetle. You're not wasting your time. You are filling the well from which the next thing you create will come.

The patience of drawing by hand

It's worth remembering how Miyazaki really works, because it is consistent with everything else: for decades he has drawn by hand, frame by frame, thousands of images for each film, resisting digital shortcuts that would have accelerated the process. This slowness is not the whim of an old master: it is the conviction that The time invested in each gesture is noticeable in the result, that the viewer perceives, even if he does not know why, when something has been done with patience and when in haste.

The morning pages share that faith in deliberate slowness. They don't look for efficiency or shortcuts; They want you to show up every morning and spend some leisurely time emptying your mind by hand. In a world that rewards doing more in less time, both Miyazaki and Julia Cameron maintain the opposite: that creativity needs the luxury of slowness, and that this luxury is within the reach of anyone willing to give it a few minutes a day.

How to make your appointment with the Miyazaki-style artist

• Go out without a productive goal. Once a week, go somewhere just to look: a park, a market, a museum, a neighborhood you don't know. Not to get anything, just to receive.
• Notice the small. Like Miyazaki with his insects, stop at the details that you normally ignore: textures, sounds, the shape of light. There is the raw material of your creativity.
• Go slowly and without a cell phone. The rush and the screen empty the well. Slowness and attention fill him. Leave the phone in your pocket and walk.