Category: creativity
Feeling Stumped?
Here are some tools that can help spur your creativity. Don’t try to execute every idea all at once — pick a link at random and follow it.
The Brainstormer (Read a history of The Brainsormer here.)
Directors Bureau Idea Generator
Michael Nobbs‘ 75 ways to Draw More and Draw Your Life
A methodology for creating new ideas (written by professional illustrator Nate Williams)
An extensive list of ideation tools
Keith Haring knew that anything worth drawing once was worth drawing a hundred times.
I like to go to movies and draw in the dark. And I love love love blind gesture drawing.
Join the BookMooch Journal Project (or just browse their blog or their Flickr pool) or 1001 Journals
Participate in the quarterly Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day.
Illustration Friday suggests a new topic once a week!
Following are some idea-generation links oriented toward writers, but they could just as easily apply to image-makers.
No one cares what you had for lunch.
Idea Generator Blog Writing Prompts
Googobs of Creative Writing Prompts
Now rock out with your socks out.
Related Posts
How (and Why) to Title Your Work (Includes some prompts to help you create interesting titles.)
Project Idea: Object Sketchbook
My Naughties
Yeah, I’m a little late to the top-ten-list party. Here are my top ten artistic moments (in chronological order) from the Naughts, 2000-2009 :
2000 I have my first solo show, ____ day of my life, at the now-defunct ASA Gallery at UNM.
2001 My senior thesis show, Actual Size, sells out. I graduate from UNM with a BFA.
2002 Making art on my own in Indiana, I realize that I need more instruction to become a better painter. This becomes my goal in applying to graduate school.
2003 I begin graduate study at RIT.
2004 I learn a heck of a lot about the illustration business, and my personal style really begins to solidify. I start making paintings like this.
2005 I complete my graduate thesis show. One of these paintings is accepted to the Society of Illustrators Scholarship Competition.
2006 I move to Oklahoma, and am warmly welcomed into the artistic community here.
2007 I get a beautiful studio above Mainsite Gallery, and a slot in the Art 365 program.
2008 The Art 365 show debuts, including my series Normal, OK.
2009 I join the fabulous, inspiring, nerdcore community at the Oklahoma City Coworking Collaborative, or okcCoCo.
And from this past year, 2009:
January: I make two drawings for the Seeing Other People show curated by Jennifer Barron.
February: I take my family to Society of Illustrators in NYC to see my piece in the annual Book Illustration exhibition.
March: I quit my last day job to commit to art full-time. Haaaa-le-lu-jah
April: I attend OVAC’s Artists’ Retreat at Quartz Mountain, where I learn all about residencies.
May: I began the Occupied project, on my own, because a) I wanted to and b) I can.
June: My drawing of romy is accepted to the 24 Works On Paper travelling exhibition.
July: Back to Normal: Normal, OK Revisited opens at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum.
August: I join the okcCoCo and move my studio there.
November: I’m accepted into OVAC’s first Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship.
December: Looking forward to 2010. There have been so many positive changes for me in recent years, I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day, 2009.09.19
This is what happened today, mixed media on paper, 2009. Click image to view source.
Get your sketchbooks out, tomorrow is Worldwide Sketch Crawl Day # 24.
Sketch Crawl is an excuse to draw whatever’s in front of you or inside your head for a whole day. (It’s like a pub crawl, but a lot more productive.) Challenge yourself, and don’t forget to stretch first. Click here to read more about participating.
I am at the end of my summer sketchbook, an upcycled beauty made by Lindsey Zodrow at Collected Thread here in OKC. I’m transitioning over to another upcycled sketchbook by Sparrowtracks, and I may dip into some Moleskine kraft-cover books.
Looking for some ideas? Have a look at the sketchbooks of Doug Chayka and Debby Kaspari. Or, download one of two pocket guides created by artist Michael Nobbs, 75 Ways to Draw More and Start to Draw Your Life. Go!
Project Idea: Object Sketchbook
Are you looking for a way to jump-start your creativity? Get a small sketchbook and devote it entirely to studies of a single object. Draw (or represent) your object as many ways as you can think of, using as many media as your book will hold. Here are some ideas, with links to examples, mostly of my work, some from other artists:
Mary, figure session 2, ink on paper, July 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
STYLES AND TECHNIQUES gestural, blind contour, continuous line, sketchy, graphic or hard-edge, fat lines, thin lines, no line, busy, calm, realistic, abstract, cartoony, calligraphic, using your non-dominant hand, local color, non-local color, cross-hatching, rectilinear, curvilinear, verbal description, typographical illustration, dark, light
Two sketchbook heads, acrylic on paper, June 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
MEDIA AND TOOLS pencil, pen, marker, colored pencil, conte crayon, crayola crayon, charcoal, digital, photograph, collage, frottage, xerox, watercolor, pastel, ink wash, fabric, thread or stitches
Valuables in here and Non-tweets, ink on paper, July 2009 by Sarah Atlee. Click image to view source.
POINT OF VIEW close up, far away, all positive space, all negative space, static, dynamic, alone, with other objects, from above, from underneath, in profile, on edge, repeated or in a pattern
That should keep us busy for awhile, yes?
