Creative Prompts #5
Push your creative boundaries
Welcome to a new edition in my series of creative prompts devoted to exploring different topics, techniques and processes.
January is my month for planning and this time I chose “growth“ as my word of the year. I want to challenge myself in several ways as an artist and grow through focusing on my skills and pushing the boundaries of my process.
I collected some ideas for you and me:
Work in layers. Experiment with different ways of starting a painting - e.g. with a loose sketch using pencils or crayons, you can also create painted backgrounds in advance. Then add layers of paint to create more interest, complexity and texture.
Be experimental with techniques. Try something new, e.g. linocut printing, image transfers, stitching, sculpting and see what happens. There are so many ways to create art and each technique can teach you some valuable lessons.
Limit your supplies for a specific project. Choose a direction you want to explore deeper and spend some time using only limited supplies, colours and substrates. A good idea is to also have a specific number of works in mind, e.g. you can commit to creating 30 collage works, portraits or landscapes.
Experiment with scale of your artwork. If you work big, create mini works and vice versa. Crop your artwork to explore interesting compositions and details. The goal of this exercise is to learn how well we can transfer and adjust our marks to different scales. Often if you want to create on a different scale, you would have to find new ways of creating marks.
Explore other areas of your creativity. Sometimes we’re so focused on the artwork and making it “right“ that it stresses us out and hinders our creativity. What I found is that changing the focus to crafts, decorating, cooking, knitting, etc. helps me to relax and loosen up, because it’s still creative, but the stakes are much lower. Thanks to that new ideas start flowing in my head. Austin Kleon has a chapter called “Don't throw any of yourself away“ in his book Steal like an Artist, where he says that we don’t have to choose between our passions, we need to “let them talk to each other“ and “something will begin to happen”.
I hope you found some inspiring ideas on this list! Please let me know, if you try some of them. Some of my goals this year include going bigger with my artwork, adding more layers and also learning printing techniques.
Thank you for reading and being here! Feel free to share these prompts with a creative friend. I’ll be happy to hear from you in the comments!
Until next time!
Lisa