19 Drawing Prompts That Will Kickstart Your Creativity!
What do you do when you don’t know what to paint? When my brain is not working properly I use Drawing Prompts. I hope These will Help you out as much as they help me. If you Don’t feel like reading about them here I made a free Checklist of these 19 Prompts for you to Download. So let’s go!
Maybe Pin this image for later!
1.Something in Front of You
Have a look around. What do you see in front of you? Different types of art materials, maybe a plant. Your coffee mug? Do some sketching of what you see. This is also a great way to practice the Art of Seeing! Which is such a good skill to have when you are an artist (no matter what kind of art you make).
2. Green Plants
Or Flowers. Check out Pinterest for inspiration. Feel free to check out my Pinterest board on green plants or flowers.
I love painting and drawing plants or trees. It’s not like drawing portrait where it’s easy to see the “flaws”, trees and plants are quirky and have all different kind of shapes. Let your imagination guide you. Maybe try a doodle style, or sketch with charcoal, or maybe paint them with gouache. One of my favorite gouache paints are from Winsor and Newton.
3. Fill Circles With Mark Making
This is One of my Favorites. I’ll Just leave you with an example from my Sketchbook for you to have a look at. The hardest part is starting. Think Circles, Dots, Bean shapes, Squibbles, Lines, Wobbly Lines, Triangles, Squares, Ovals and anything in between.
4. Random Shapes
Don’t Think too much. Just Grab your pencil and start making random shapes. This is how we figure out what we like and dislike. Maybe you find some interesting shapes to use in your paintings.
5. Your Favorite Animal
I don’t have a lot of practice in drawing animals, but when I draw them it’s usually my cat and in a loose sketchy way. I’m a huge fan of the more illustrative styles, and those cute kawaii animals. Maybe just make it simple if you feel intimated and draw some blobs and circles on top of each other, some ears and a cute facial expression.
6. Landscape with Mountains
This is one of my favorite subject. Before I Deep Dived into the Abstract World I painted landscapes all the time. With colored pencils, watercolor, gouache or acrylic paint.
I still love it, and I especially enjoy the sketching phase when figuring out the composition and colors. Here are some examples:
7. Your Favorite Furniture.
This is kind of hard one for me, especially if you want to get the perspective and dimensions right, but you don’t have to. You can make it your own style. I like the more quirky and fun illustrative style.
8. Imaginary Animals.
Do you remember when you where a kid and made up animals or stories around them? Or maybe you have a child who is really into drawing. They sometime combine the most amazing things. Like a Unicorn-Spider, a flying cat or a fairy-bug. Whatever you want. I promise. This is a fun one. If you feel embarrassed no one has to see it. But I bet they will be awesome. Also a fun activity to do with your kids.
9. Simple Pattern.
If I have low energy and don’t want to think too much I create a repeated pattern. Sometimes only consisting of circles and blobs. Make it as easy or intricate as you feel like. This is also awesome to do in Procreate to make seamless patterns for prints.
Here I used one of mye favorite colors; Perylene Green from Daniel Smith Watercolors.
10. Favorite Flower.
One of My Favorite flowers are Poppies. I love using watercolor for this, but you can use whatever you have laying around. Make your own pinterest board or have a look in you garden, balcony, in the city park, your neighbours garden (maybe ask first :) ). Or maybe walk around a nearby forest to have a look at some beautiful wildflowers. Feel free to check out my pinterst board on flowers and floral art.
11. Your Art Supplies
Get out your favorite art supplies and make a still life. This is also a good way to practice composition, or just to paint something easy to access. I also find it good to draw stuff from real life and not always from a photograph. The way we see color and values in real life are so much more intricate and complex.
12. Random Lines
I like this exercise when I don’t have the energy to concentrate. Just drawing random lines on a page. I like to draw them as close together as I can to see what kind of shape and pattern they will turn out to be in the end. I also sometimes fill in squares or circles with lines, using different sizes or materials.
13. A Dream You Had
Not everyone remembers their dreams, but I dream a lot and I like to write them down in my Dream Journal or sometimes do some sketches of them. Especially if they are the night terror kind of dream where I guess I’m trying to process something.
When I was young I used to dream about being a professional snowboarder (yup, that was my career goal from 11-15 years old), and I drew all of these amazing tricks I did in my dreams, like a triple back flip and some made up weird PlayStation Tony Hawk pro kind of tricks.
14. Cozy Cottage.
Anyone feeling the countryside aesthetic, or dream of getting out of the city? I’m always amazed at illustrators and artists who makes the most amazing scenery, cityscapes and architectural artwork. Why not draw your own version? In my had I think it would be heavy influenced by my parents cabin on the mountains and Animal Crossing.
15. Draw a Feeling
Try to draw a feeling. Or your state of mind if your are struggling with more of a symptom kind of feeling (depression or anxiety). It can be very beneficial to try and visualize and express how you feel. Remember the Movie Inside Out from Pixar? This is one adorable way to do it. Or maybe you are more like me and it just comes out as more random abstract shapes. That’s also perfectly fine. Whatever you feel like.
This is from one of my absolute favorite sketchbooks. Strathmore 500 Mixed Media. The paper is quite bright and has a nice tooth to it. It is truly a mixed media sketchbook. You can’t expect the same quality as a high end watercolor paper, but it is the best mixed media sketchbook I have tried so far.
16. Butterflies
I chose this one, because i LOVE butterflies. And there are so many species out there. If you don’t want to go the realistic way just draw the outline of a butterfly and use your imagination to color inside the lines. Using different mark-making, shapes, lines and color.
17. Trees
My old time favorite. I love drawing trees so much. This is what I used to fill my margins in my note books with. You can’t go wrong with this, because they are all so different. I find it very soothing as well.
18. Draw a Memory
Draw a Memory that means a lot to you. You might have a clear idea of what it is or maybe it’s just a feeling. Draw it in your style. If you don’t know what style you enjoy the most, here are some suggestions: the intuitive and abstract way. Make an awesome and detailed illustration, some simple sketches, or maybe even collage.
19. Draw a Map
Did you ever do this as a kid? I used to do it all the time. Treasure maps or secret worlds. Creative your own magical map.
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Want Some more Tips and Tricks? You might enjoy this blog post:
Thank you!
For reading this far. I hope this was helpful. I made a PDF for you to Download if you like having them as checklists. It only consists of the headings (not all of my rambling). Maybe you can use this as an inspiration to create your own list of ideas. Remember to have fun and take care of yourself and your loved ones.
I wish you a kind and self-compassionate creative practice
x Eirin
