Art Prompts/Ideas

Useful Links

1. Animal reference images that are looking in the direction you define: https://x6ud.github.io/
2. Random poses/etc challenges: https://line-of-action.com/ is a site that'll probably work (though it has changed urls over the years)
3. Free images with an extremely permissive license: [Unsplash]

All Prompts

Note: I do not guarantee that I will not reorganize this list. Numbering is subject to change over time

1. A cat wearing a fancy hat
2. Bubble Bath in a fancy drinking glass
3. Your utensil drawer as it currently is, no organizing
4. no name brand book cover (If you aren't Canadian, look at [this wikipedia page] to understand)
5. Pokémon, but using the wrong base creature (e.g. pikachu as a meerkat, bulbasaur as a bunny, charmander as a fish, squirtle as a squirrel)
6. Dogs playing poker, but change something up. For further inspiration:
   1. maybe they're playing a different game (maybe not even a card game)
   2. maybe they're all colourful sparkledogs
   3. maybe you use a different animal
   4. maybe they're in a different house
7. Famous paintings, but animals instead of people. You could also use fantasy creatures instead of real animals
8. Try drawing some unusual animals. For further inspiration:
   1. newts
   2. Indian Giant Squirrel
   3. okapi
   4. aardwolf
   5. gophers
   6. manul
   7. dik-dik
   8. nudibranch
   9. gecko
   10. black footed cat
   11. ferret
   12. badger
   13. snake
   14. the common moth
   15. shrimp
   16. lobster
9. Choose a different angle for an animal head to draw that you usually wouldn't do. A helpful site for this is https://x6ud.github.io/
10. Draw skeletons in silly poses
11. Random poses/etc challenge: https://line-of-action.com/ is a site that'll probably work
12. Make a where's waldo style image with lots of little details
13. Spilling milk... and don't cry about this prompt ;p
14. Something's not quite right (in a similar way to AI generated stuff)
15. Mmmmm crunchy leaf
16. Translate a song into a single image, but imagine your audience is deaf and has never heard it. (If you're deaf, hmmmmm... draw what you imagine a song would sound like?)
17. Just textures. For further inspiration:
    1. Soft
    2. rough
    3. sharp
    4. bright
    5. slippery
    6. squishy
    7. crunchy
18. Lichen
19. Interesting natural features of landscapes. Especially more unusual places. For further inspiration:
    1. Yellowstone's pools
    2. geysers
    3. terraces
    4. hoodoos
    5. glacial rivers
    6. brine pools
    7. crystal caves
20. Your childhood room from any angle. (Feel free to mess with the timeline if you want, or not)
21. The art supplies that you're using to make the art
22. Make a classic hand turkey. (Trace your hand and turn it into a turkey. If you don't have a hand, use some other body part? Or borrow someone else's)
23. Bouquet of flowers
24. Draw some meat. As part of a cooked meal, uncooked, or even mostly unprocessed. (Do note that depending on what you decide to make, this could categorize as gore...)
25. Try drawing something in a different style/genre than usual. For further inspiration:
    1. candy gore
    2. pastel goth
    3. Lisa frank style
26. Do you love the colour of the sky? (This is a meme from tumblr. It's essentially just a realllllly long image of the sky at all hours of the day)
27. Draw some musical instruments. Especially more uncommon ones. For further inspiration:
    1. the hurdy gurdy
    2. accordion
    3. bassoon
    4. a literal cannon
    5. wood block
    6. tambourine
    7. bagpipes
28. Memes, but minimal. symbology. Think the loss glyph ,',|,'_'
29. Make a political cartoon. Feel free to make as hot or cold of a take as you are comfortable with.
30. Beatrix Potter style animals in little clothes
31. Draw the pokemon Espurr! (This is just Hamner pandering to their own interests. Espurr is my favourite Pokémon.)
32. Extreme emotion in expressions
33. A less commonly seen perspective for a normal everyday thing. For further inspiration:
    1. A fountain from underneath the water
    2. A tree, but looking up from the trunk. Consider that there are many types of tree: Pines, Oaks, palm trees...
    3. Hovercat. (Cat sitting on a glass table, but from below)
    4. Outside the window on a rainy day
    5. Above the clouds
    6. Find a nebula image from the space telescopes and try to draw how you imagine it would look from somewhere else in the universe
34. The shadow of a candle flame
35. Perspective of a long hallway
36. egg. (Your choice for: raw, broken, cooked, baked, boiled, non-chicken, etc)
37. Play with rotational symmetry or a mandela pattern
38. Try a variety of hairstyles
39. Fanart of characters with their roles swapped (or ages, or backgrounds, etc)
40. Fanart of characters using their text descriptions instead of their usual visuals
41. The same thing at 3 or more levels of detail from minimalism to realistic
42. Try to make a new stage between the evolutions of pokemon
43. Make baby forms of pokemon that don't have them (or newborn baby forms for those that do)
44. Deep sea horrors or deep space horrors
45. What you had for a meal yesterday
46. Some sort of new fancy drink
47. The prairie
48. Vehicles. For further inspiration:
    1. Super fast sports car
    2. rusted beater truck
    3. Semi truck (with or without a trailer)
    4. repurposed school bus
    5. garbage truck
49. Very muscled limbs and body. Like Major Armstrong from FMA
50. Chimeras. (Combinations of animals. The classical chimera is a lion with the head of a goat and the tail of a snake)
51. Shoes and other footwear
52. Depict a paintball war
53. Do a single line drawing (don't lift your drawing tool off the surface)
54. Use your off hand or foot or mouth instead of your usual technique
55. Scribble a blob and then turn it into a new type of creature (alternatively, draw what you see in clouds or other randomish patterns)
56. Draw a circle and then draw something as if it were on drawn on the sphere's surface
57. Just do a classic drawing like you would have done when you were a young child: House? family? park? just massive scribbles?
58. Scribble style! Draw something silly and colour it "badly" with bits wildly outside the lines and missing colour inside in some spots
59. If you're used to perspective, try doing something without it. like those medieval tapestries where people are on hills, but are somehow all the same size. Or that one "perspective wolf" meme where the nose is sideways but the face is towards you. Or peppa pig.
60. Draw something that interacts with the background in some way. (e.g. Swimming in a pool/lake/river, lounging on a couch with a blanket, actively cooking a meal)
61. Draw two people or creatures directly interacting. (e.g. holding hands, hugging, dropkicking, someone petting a dog)
62. Make something you will not share with anyone. "If you've got an idea for something that you'll never be able to show to anyone else – maybe it's too personal, maybe it's too pornographic, maybe it just doesn't fit your idiom – you should absolutely go ahead and write it anyway. [...]"
63. Make something that's in poor taste or is blatantly offensive. You don't have to agree with the message. You don't have to keep it or share it. You can (and depending on how far you go, probably should) destroy it after and not keep any record of it. I'm not writing up suggestions for this.
64. Unlikely Friends
65. Mismatched timeline. Something from the future in the past or vice versa.
66. Inanimate objects attending school. (Preschool? Elementary? Highschool? College? Trade School?)
67. Something with the appearance of one object, but with a slice taken out and reveals it's made of another. For inspiration:
    1. An apple made of an orange (or vice versa)
    2. Something made of cake
68. Find a tutorial and follow it as precisely as you can. No room for creativity in this prompt. If it explicitly gives you creativity options, try to choose the same ones the tutorial provides examples for or leave them out. Just take this chance to relax your brain and try doing something in a way you wouldn't normally do
69. Find a tutorial and try to apply it to something very different
70. Make a geometric pattern.For inspiration:
    1. [aperiodic tiling]