Maybe ‘prompts’ isn’t exactly the right word, but these thoughts are just to get you to pick up a pencil, pen, brush, whatever and make marks on a piece of paper until you get a scribble that looks intriguing or you decide what you’re going to focus on drawing for the time you have set aside. Something groovy will become a happening, I swear it.
- Go to your closest library and camp out in the kids’ room to enjoy the book covers, illustrations and vocabulary of some of the best books in the country.
- Write a paragraph describing what you’d love to be able to paint. Put it in an envelope and write “Do not open until …” and make the date a year from today. Address the envelope to yourself, stamp and mail it. When it gets back to you, tape the envelope to your calendar so you don’t lose it. By the time you get to open it, I’m really sure you’ll have made a lot of progress working in your favorite medium. A cool way to track your progress from intention to action.
- Set a timer for ten minutes and then, using your non-dominant hand, draw an object in the room that’s in a good light and something you like.
- Amble over to the park and take photos with your phone of the underside of things: a leaf, a picnic table, water fountain. This is to get you to look at things a little differently, literally.
- Go through your pad and dig out every crayon, lead pencil or fountain pen (that still works and has ink in it), sit on the floor and draw a series of letters from A to G, H to K, L to Q, R to V. Skip the last four letters if you want to, or set them in their own category. Do any of your creative ramblings strike a chord or set off new ideas?
Now before you can channel that inner critic again, grab whatever drawings you made and put them in a safe place. In a week or so, get them out and just look at the colors you used, the kind of paper, the playful color sequences and so on. Something will click for you.
I hope these mini-ideas set off a huge surge of creativity for you. You can re-use them again and again if you get stuck. Until next read, stay awesome.
#onedimensionalartist A.R. Tist