Art Challenges to Boost Your Creativity
Sometimes as artists we get stuck. It happens to almost everyone. You just feel like you are in a rut and the idea for the next painting won’t come. Here are some creativity-boosters that have helped me in the past. Perhaps they will help you also.
Breaking Out of Your Creative Rut
I want you to pretend that you are an art teacher and create a list of ideas that you would give to your students to challenge them to create something that for them is “out of the box”. Then discipline yourself to take up the challenge of creating paintings based on several of those ideas. I will get you started with some I have brainstormed. There are many others that you could come up with yourself.
Eight Creative Painting Challenges
- Paint a landscape in which the horizon line is extremely high on the canvas. What this will do is create a view as though you are looking from a high vantage point. Create thumbnail sketches first to work out the idea before executing. Or you could go out with your camera and take photos from high places, like hills, bridges, towers, upper floors of buildings, etc. Identify the horizon line in your chosen photo and place it near the top of your canvas.
- Paint a landscape with an extremely low horizon line. This makes for what is basically a sky painting. You can Google photos of dramatic skies, glorious skies, cloudy skies over the ocean, etc. Place your horizon line low and make 90 percent of the painting sky. Pay the same attention to composition, focal point, and values as you would in any other painting.
- Paint an abstract. But don’t just splash paint on the canvas with no plan. Create thumbnail sketches that work out elements of design and light and dark values, etc. Generally, abstracts have more impact when they are large. Semi-abstracts are also impactful in a large format. If you are not used to painting abstracts, one way to begin is to make a small rectangular viewfinder from poster paper and scan photos in magazines, zooming in on interesting areas of color, shape and line and be sure to identify a strong focal point. Then create your painting based on that design.
- Paint a symbolist painting. Read about the symbolist movement. You may paint from the imagination or gather objects that hold special meaning to you and organize them in a still life. Another idea is to do a self-portrait and fill the “atmosphere” around your image with things that represent deep emotionally felt areas of your life. These can be gleaned from childhood memories or from meaningful experiences you have had through the years.
- Do a Master Copy. This is an acceptable practice for painters. It involves copying a work by a famous artist that you admire, like Van Gogh, Sargeant, Monet, etc. This is one of the best ways to learn new ways of painting and developing your skill.
- Create an underwater painting. For example, a coral reef, or an aquarium, or whales, etc.
- Create a Nocturne, which is a Night Painting. You might consider doing a small copy of a night scene by a famous, or professional artist just to learn how they mute the colors, create subtle variations even in the shadows, or how they create a luminous moon with brilliant clouds radiant with light. Another popular choice is to paint a cityscape at night. Do a google search for “nocturne paintings” for inspiration.
- Go into your yard. Use a small viewfinder. (a miniature frame cut out of poster paper). View different spots in your yard through the viewfinder and look for a creative composition. Set up your easel and paint. It may be a closeup of an object or flower, or it may be a broad section of the yard, but be sure you have a strong element of design, light and shadow, a focal point, etc.
Essential Principles and Taking Action
These are just eight challenges; you can probably brainstorm many more. The trick is to discipline yourself to actually accomplish several of these. They can open new areas for you to expand your creativity and produce exciting paintings that have a wow factor! With all of these, you must still incorporate the basic disciplines of good painting. These include: Good composition, color harmony, Soft and hard edges, Center of interest, etc.
And of course, nothing works if you put it off. Sometimes as artists we sit and think of all kinds of things we should create, yet we procrastinate and fail to actually pick up our brushes and just do it. Here’s a “secret” to remember: You learn to paint by painting! Teachers may help, and a good instructor is invaluable. But without LOTS of painting you won’t improve. Improvement comes with using up acres of canvas and a small fortune in paint. But you have to be free with it and pour yourself into it.
I hope that this little post will help you on your journey.
Blessings,
Mark