Creative Prompts #9

Working in a series

A sneak peek into my new series of floral work

This month’s prompts are devoted to the exciting topic of creating a series or collection of work.

So what exactly is it - a series?

I think about it in terms of creating visual unity and a cohesive narrative across several pieces of art.

Why do you need to work in a series in the first place?

There are many possible answers to that question. Perhaps you are working towards an exhibition, plan to launch new work on your website or just want to explore deeper a particular theme or subject. For me it also helps to lower the pressure of making one “good” finished piece, because I know I will create a lot of work.

If you’re interested, here are some ideas for you:

• Think about a common thread to explore in the series. You can take a look at your old work to figure out what you want to focus on. Another idea is to work towards a brief - for an imaginary client, like designers and illustrators do, or it can be creating a series within an art challenge.

• Limit your choices. Choose specific art supplies, colours and substrates for this series to achieve visual unity. You don’t necessarily need to create pieces that are all the same size, or use the exact same palette, there is place for variety, but some limitations are certainly helpful.

• Prepare supporting materials that will guide you through creating the series - colour swatches, sketches and preliminary studies, compositional thumbnails, old work examples, inspiration from other artists, etc.

• Create an inspiration board or folder in order to organize and spotlight the supporting materials and refer to them when creating the series.

• Create a LOT of work. This is the most important prompt in my opinion. You get looser and more confident the more you explore the theme, because you are not focused on creating “5 perfectly cohesive pieces”. You also start understanding better what you really enjoy and you can fine tune parameters for the next pieces. Besides, you will have more choices when showcasing the collection - you don’t need to include all of your experiments into the final body of work, but it comes together thanks to all the pieces you made.

I hope these prompts inspire you to try working in a series and, as always, you can approach my ideas in your own way!

A series doesn’t automatically imply work that is super similar and only focuses on one subject, all you need to start with is a common thread - something that ties the series together - but you need to create a lot and let the process lead you.

Creating a collection doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to “do” something with it (like exhibit or sell), it can be a great way to explore ideas that excite you, improve your skills and move towards learning more about your style and process:

Elements of art style

The Creative Process

Currently, I am trying to work more out of my sketchbooks and scale up the size of my work, so I am creating a collection of floral pieces exploring compositions, shapes and textures with the goal of being looser and more expressive. I feel that creating in a series helps me to nail down what and how I want to express with this work.

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! Do you create work in series or collections?

Until next time!

Lisa