Why Use Art Prompts?

If you’re an artist, chances are you’ve experienced “artist’s block.” And if you’ve experienced artist’s block, chances are you’ve tried using art prompts.

I used to really love using art prompts to think of ideas. I don’t do it as much anymore, but for a while when I was younger, they were all I ever used when making new art. While writing this post, I tried to find my old favourite prompt generator, but unfortunately the website is down so I can’t share it with you.

I think using these prompts really improved my artistic abilities. First of all, they provide you with something really important: creative constraints. Creative constraints are rules or guidelines that you have to follow when you’re making something. It’s best when they’re self-imposed, otherwise they can kind of kill your motivation (speaking from experience in high school art classes where all they ever let us make was abstract paintings). The constraints can range from a specific subject matter to a specific medium to only being able to paint with food products. Whatever it is, the constraints force you to step out of your comfort zone and think of new ideas to get around them.

Next, they inspire you in other ways. For example, let’s say your prompt is to “depict the feeling of happiness using the colour yellow”. After you make that piece, it can inspire you to explore art about other emotions. It can inspire you to use different techniques other than colour. You might find yourself a week later using texture to depict sadness.

Art prompts are also a great way to connect with other artists. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably an artist yourself (or one of my friends, hi guys), which means you’ve probably heard of things like Inktober. It’s an event that happens every October where thousands of artists worldwide draw from the same list of prompts. Back when I used to participate, I would scroll through the inktober hashtag on Instagram every day and see what other people drew for that day’s prompt. It was really inspiring and helped me find a lot of new artists to follow. Artists all over the world definitely connect over things like Inktober.

If you want to try an art prompt generator, I would recommend searching for the right one for you specifically. It really depends on what your style is. The one I used to use gave very abstract prompts based on ideas or feelings, sometimes also providing a colour scheme or an instruction to use certain shapes. But you might want one more like this, which pretty much tells you exactly what to draw. It all depends on you!

To end off this post, let’s look at a few pieces of art I did based on prompts. Disclaimer: I was a lot younger when I made these, probably around ten or eleven.

This one was inspired by the prompt "Paranoia." I'm definitely not a fan of the hands, but I like the texture I gave to the otherwise boring yellow background.

I don't fully remember what this one's prompt was, but I think it was something like "deteriorating." Kind of a weird one.

This one was more complex. I think the prompt was "depict the feeling of loss." I won't launch into a full analysis because honestly I don't remember what exactly I was going for, but feel free to interpret it yourself.

So overall, you can see that these pieces are pretty unique and different from what I usually make, and I owe it all to the fact that I used a prompt generator. I would never have made anything like them without it!

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