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
Dr. Sketchy's OKC One Year Anniversary 2010.01.10
Has it been a year already? Join us tonight to celebrate one year of Dames, Drinking, and Drawing in OKC! Tonight's show will once again feature Tulsa's Ilsa the Wolf. Bring ten bucks, a chair, and your crayons.
Ilsa the Wolf, from Dr. Sketchy's OKC, January 2009. Click image to view source.
Click here to see some more drawings from Dr. Sketchy's OKC, or to learn more about this whole bidness.
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.
Found on Flickr: Visual Diary, November & December 2009
Curious Photo from the George Eastman House collection on Flickr Commons. Click image to view source.
Visual Diary, November 2009: Heads Up
The Virtue Series: Wisdom, graphite and pastel on paper, 2002 by Scott Brooks. Click image to view source. (Scott G. Brooks' website here.)
Visual Diary, December 2009: Minty Fresh
See what else I've Found on Flickr.
Oklahoma Art Writing & Curatorial Fellowship article in Journal Record
Daniel Chester French, foremost American sculptor, in his studio at Stockbridge, Mass. Photo from the Smithsonian Archive on the Flickr Commons. Click image to view source.
The 12 Fellows for the first Oklahoma Art Writing & Curatorial Fellowship have been announced. I can't wait to get started!
There's an article in the Journal Record today about the Fellowship, plus a photo of me looking downright respectable in my studio. Snip:
The fellows selected for the program will be matched with mentors ranging from a curator in Cleveland, Ohio, to an art critic in New York City to an art professor from Fort Worth, Texas. Mentors and fellows will work together on contemporary art writing, and mentors will guide their fellows on a final project. The public can be part of the process at three panel discussions scheduled for February, March and September at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.