So before I say anything else I want to say a huge thank you for the encouragement on my introductory post the other day. I wasn't expecting such a big outpouring of support and it was refreshing to see.
Also @steevc for the mention in their recent post!
But anyway! Moving on to the topic at hand, I am currently working on a small personal project (which will be getting its own blog post) and it got me thinking about the impact thatprompts and art challenges have had on my artistic journey this past year or so.
I'm sure many of you can agree that the past couple of years have done nothing to aid in creativity. As artists we get a lot of our ideas from our personal experiences, or at least I do! So, when you are not having as many real life experiences where do you turn to?
For me that has been social media prompts, challenges and, sometimes, even trends. Just the other day I made an illustration of myself as a chinchilla for a tiktok video!
I started to show an interest in art prompts, roughly a year ago, when an illustrator, named Becka Moore, ran a weekly art prompt called drawmoore. My Grandma had passed away a couple months before which had a direct impact on my ability to create but when I saw Becka's prompts I wanted to get involved.
It helped that the prompts where so different to others that I had seen. Things like "identical twins reading spooky stories by the fireside" and "a monkey butler on skates delivering something very important" invoked a sense of imagery that I couldn't ignore.
Not only did these weekly prompts become integral to my creative and technical development they were also key to improving my mental health. In creating stories about dogs stealing bones and the weathered fox detectives investigating their crimes I somehow managed to feel better about the world.
Unfortunately all good things have to come to an end and that included the wonderfully, whimsical drawmoore prompts. Though I live in never ending hope that one day they might return!
What followed was chilldhoodweek2021 a week long challenge that prompted a sense of nostalgia and child-like wonderment. This was a single word prompt challenge, making it more open for interpretation, which can be more daunting when you are struggling with creativity.
My favourite illustration from this set of prompts was actually one that I misinterpreted.
Grounded. My parents where never really the kind of parents that grounded me as a child so when I read this prompt initially I wasn't really sure what it meant. My journey into understanding my mental health lead me to interpret it as the techniques by which we ground ourselves when we are struggling and my mind immediately went to water, streams, nature and the Yorksire Dales.
The illustration was still successful for me personally, especially the study of the water in this piece which is something that has impacted a lot of illustrations after this one. The fact that there's no wrong way of interpretating the prompts alleviates some of the pressure we might be tempted to place on ourselves.
And lastly, my most recent prompts have actually come from Tiktok; original character Challenges and just drawing people on the app that I find visually interesting. Because of these I have recently been able to create an original character, the first in what feels like a long time.
Garrek is half Orc, half spider demon, he has none of their strengths and all of their weaknesses; essentially just making him a weird looking human. He doesn't really fit in anywhere but people tend to like him because of his quiet nature and dark sense of humour. His familiar is a chicken and is utterly useless beyond keeping Garreks shoulders warm in cold weather.
So conclusion time I guess! If you are in a creative rut, maybe try searching out some prompts? Find something that suits you, there's tons of things out there. If you are in the UK there is also the 'I Am All Stories ' community which send a prompt to you through the post every month! (I'll do a post on that soon!)
Alternatively ask a friend or fellow artist to give you a challenge. This could be anything from merging animals (name 3 animals and create a new creature), creating a situation (a noun/ living creature, an emotion and an action) or character creation (colour scheme, gender, style, personality). You're challenging your creative thinking in a pressure free way and creating something you wouldn't have done otherwise.
Finally, my question to you guys, are there any prompt/ challenge communities or blogs run on Hive that I should know about?
All images are my own and can be found on my other social media platforms under the name Leonie Makes.