Drawing Daily Prompts

[Lewbotart]

Hey Guys! (This is my first post)

So I want to get back into the habit of drawing everyday for obvious reasons, but I'm not sure what to fill my sketch book with. Having something like inktober is great and very inspiring while everyone is drawing daily and posting and you also have prompts to help you out, but I feel like I dont have the same momentum on my own.
The last week I've been trying to draw every day on my half hour lunch break at work, but when I look at the blank page, I ether don't know what to draw OR I end up drawing the same figures in the same poses... I don't think this is helping.

Does anyone have any Advice to give on what I should or could be drawing everyday?
Do you think its more important to be drawing what you feeling like drawing (even if that's repetitive) OR do you think its more important to be practicing things outside your comfort zone?

Sometimes I find myself looking at Gary Baseman's sketch books and even tho its somewhat repetitive it looks like he has millions of Ideas that just come to him as hes drawing.

This was longer than I wanted it to be, any help or advice would be much appreciated

[Miriam]

@lewbotart
It sounds like having ideas written down ahead of time would be helpful, since you don't want to use up the break-time thinking of something.

I think doing multiple drawings of the same or similar characters is good, but it'd probably be better to do different angles, poses, expressions, situations, interacting with different characters and objects, etc.

Have you watched Jake Parker's "Design 100 Somethings" video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxa01j9Ns7o
That could be something to give you a daily assignment to draw, while stretching your creativity.

You could also just make lists of things you like to draw ahead of time, or chose a theme each week. There are word generators online, so you could get a random word and work off of that.

Just some ideas!

[MOO]

I sometimes ask people on facebook to give me ideas. Recently I felt liek doing some painting so I asked my FB friends to give me a noun, verb, one NON color adjective and then two colors. Then I had to use those in my painting-kind of like MAD LIBS for art. Maybe you can do some things like that. Also, I did a self imposed challenge of making drawings out of the letter S that started with an S in Sept. one year. Another challenge I gave myself (because I want to writet more) was a doodle and a thyme. Everyday I had to come up with a simple rhyme and then illustrate it. I also do a Monster drawing challenge on occasion. I ask kids to describe a monster for me and then I draw it. You could do that with many things. Follow teh alphabet and make up some drawings that start with each letter. I have had teachers give us a challenge to look in a dictionary for 4 random pages and find a word on each page, then choose one of those words to illustrate...Anyway, it's kind of fun if yuo can make a game and a cerative challenge out of it. Oh! You could also copy some of your favorite artists for awhile.

[smceccarelli]

Something that I neglected when I was younger but appreciated so much more during my artistic growth is live drawing.....and then, the world is your model. My sketchbook sessions nearly always start with drawing what I see around me: people, faces, gestures, trees, dogs, cars. If I have enough time I will bring in some invented characters or make illustration thumbnails. But my sketching staple is still live drawing, with coffee shops and playgrounds being my favorite places. Is there anywhere you can go during your pause that offers intersting subject matter? There is visual inspiration nearly everywhere....

[carriecopadraws]

http://artprompts.org/ could be an interesting resource for inspiration.

If you get stuck thinking of that one thing to draw, a good exercise might be to flip the script, and spend 5 minutes writing down as many ideas as you can (like everything that comes to mind when you think of the beach), or drawing as many quick gestures as you can. Quantity over quality. Then look at your scribbles and see if anything jumps out at you.

[demotlj]

Two techniques I've used --

1. One year, I made myself do a sketch a day of something that reflected an event/feel of the day. They were sometimes cartoons of funny things that happened, sketches of mundane meetings, or seasonal drawings (for example, the first day in spring that the frogs started chirping, I drew a frog in the pond.) It ended up being a cool sketch diary of my life that year and helped me pay better attention to my day because I eventually started watching for things to draw. (It also made frustrating events more bearable because I'd be thinking, "How can I make a cartoon out of this?")

2. Other years, I've chosen a category for the day -- animals, furniture, landscapes, portraits, etc. -- and then googled the category and made myself draw the first thing on the google image list. This method has the advantage that you can just pick several categories that you keep repeating for awhile.

I will add that whenever I've really forced myself to do a sketch a day, I am reminded of how much my drawing improves as a result. It's not always an easy discipline but well worth it.

[Lewbotart]

@miriam those are great Ideas, and no I haven't watched that video, I will do now that you've pointed it out. drawing same characters in different angles and poses is a really good Idea too! thank you so much for sharing x

[Lewbotart]

@marsha-kay-ottum-owen Thoes are great Ideas! maybe I can ask my followers on social media for some ideas also tbh I love all of those suggestions, thank you so much for replying! x

[Lewbotart]

@smceccarelli I like the idea of doing this also, I see a lot of artists do it on social media, I always feel self conscious of drawing strangers though. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and start drawing them!

[smceccarelli]

@lewbotart At the beginning is hard....but after a while you don’t think any more about that. The trick is not to lock at them too long - people have a sixth sense for feeling eyes on them. Take a few seconds to make a mental note of a few key characteristics and then draw a character based on the model - nobody said that your drawing should look like the person, it´s only an inspiration.

[demotlj]

@Lewbotart The other thing that you have to get used to with live drawing in public places is people wanting to look at what you are doing. I had a mall security man actually ask to look through my whole sketchbook! (He was genuinely interested but it was a little embarrassing.) Now I take a sketchbook with some decent sketches in it so that if the one I'm working on is terrible I can show it quickly and then flip to another one for them to look at! It's really great practice though.

[Pamela Fraley]

@lewbotart Just a couple ideas. I find it easier to know what to do if I have a specific goal in mind. Maybe set a goal for a month and decide youre going to work on that specific thing.

1. Portraits. I've learned a lot focusing on these and I have a Pinterest board of cool faces and things that I want to try sketching. Maybe do 30 days of Portraits? 2. The 100 hand challenge. One of the classes mentioned that as a great activity, because hands are hard. I could see it being a daily art prompt too "5 hands a day". 3. most of the SVS classes come with assignments, so you could hone in on one of those, like the draw 50 things class. I did lots of research and sketching before I did my piece for that. You literally have to figure out how to draw 50 things and figure out where to place them in a composition. If you figure out what you want to do, you could work on the objects in your composition - with the end goal of a finished piece.

When I'm stuck I usually think of something I hate to draw and try to force myself to learn it.

[Lewbotart]

@carriecopa I LOVE this idea thank you

[Lewbotart]

@demotlj I Love that google picture idea!! thanks for the reply