I designed my own list of 14 prompts with the sole purpose to invite creativity into my life on a daily basis and encourage me to explore and experiment.  I didn’t want a list of nouns or adjectives which automatically constrain my thoughts, instead opting or 14 prompts centred on types of media or art techniques.

Along the way, I enjoyed the commitment to myself to make art and play but didn’t force the process. It took closer to 3 weeks to finish because I needed a few days break but that’s fine by me.  It was always more about finishing the list so I got to explore my tools rather than strictly obeying my own “law” of completing it in exactly 14 days.

You can click on each image to look at them in closer detail, if you like.

I thoroughly enjoyed this whole process. I reconnected with the basic building blocks of my art simply by taking a tool and playing. During the time I was making these pieces, I did have a slump with my mental health and felt blocked for a couple of days but it was, as it always is, therapeutic to pick up my coloured pencils and draw that blue jay for day 5 once I felt ready to create again.

When I started my challenge, I planned to do each piece before work but this was mostly so it felt low pressure.  I didn’t want to scare myself off by getting trapped into thinking every piece had to take hours to create. The filming and editing I did for Instagram took longer than almost every piece but that’s just the way it is, with sharing your work through video and social media. Some days I did my piece in my lunch break at work, others, namely the weekend days, I created for hours in my studio, and relished every minute surrounded by my materials.

The benefit of, say, only being allowed to use watercolour one day, graphite another, ink another was that I had to push each media towards its limits to create a piece of work I was happy with. Likewise with the analogous palette or the large mixed media forest scene I created, my focus was centred on the concept of layering colour or media in creative ways. I didn’t have to worry what to draw, I just had to think about how to draw something and for me this is far easier.  The big problem with most art challenges is figuring out how the hell to capture “large”, or “dream”, or “metallic” – for me, this is way harder than just splashing paint about until the shapes make sense to me.
I didn’t really connect with the three material prompt and was unsatisfied with my basic sketch in marker, acrylic paint and graphite. Perhaps that is something I will explore again at a later date to see where it takes me but otherwise, I was very happy to see this collection coming together. I love the pumpkins very much, the mixed media forest lets me see how much progress I’ve made in the 4 years since I first tried to paint it, and the landscapes really confirmed that true happiness in art making is in being creative not slavish copying of a reference.


All in all, I class this project as a success. It demonstrated to myself what I’ve learnt about light, shape and form whilst also showing me where I might grow in future art practices. So much so that I fully intend upon coming back to my list in the future, perhaps even more than once, to help me check in with my practice and find my way back to centre.

 

Do any of these pieces or prompts resonate with you? How would you approach this challenge? Do let me know in the comments and help inspire our creative community with new ideas.