Chronicles Project: Explanation and Prompts

 

This is the master list for the weekly prompts – pick as many as you want to include!  You can do a different one each day of the week if you want, or two a day or three a day.  If you want to weigh more heavily towards the art and less towards photography, that is totally your choice.  If you want to avoid journaling, DO IT.  This is YOUR JOURNAL, your story, your chronicle.  If something is pissing you off and driving you crazy, write about it.  Then paint over it.  Don’t let it rule you.

The whole point of this is to take the bits and pieces of your weekly lives and make them into one complete spread.  Instead of making a background and plopping a quote on it and calling it good, think about the things that will entertain you when you look back on a spread 10 years from now.  If that quote really speaks to your soul, use it.  Don’t use it just because you’ve seen it on 100 other art journal pages.

Okay?  Okay.  Here we go!!  I will probably edit this list through the year, just so ya know. 🙂

Art Prompts:

1. Illustrate your day, comic book style.
2. Draw your breakfast/lunch/dinner/coffee/pound cake.  Give it a face if you want, make it moldy, make it covered in fire ants and hibiscus flowers.  Make it interesting.
3. Look to YouTube for a tutorial and then do it!  You can always do it on a separate sheet and glue it in!
4. If you’re in a workshop or class, actually do an exercise (I am notoriously bad about taking workshops and not doing anything with them)
5. Draw a caricature of a celebrity in the news.
6. Illustrate something hilarious that you heard.
7. Draw something off one of our 100 things to draw lists!  (here’s 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014)
8. DOODLE.  I think everyone should doodle.  Fill the gaps between your prompts with doodles.  Look up doodling on pinterest for inspiration.  USE INK!
9. If there’s something you want to get better at, use your journal to practice.  For me, that’s collage and fancy lettering, so I’ll be doing a lot of both, I’m sure.
10. Illustrate a song lyric.
11. Open a book to a random page.  Find a random blurb of text.  Make art to go with it.
12. Draw something off Art Trader’s MONSTER LIST.  For even more fun, go to random.org and have it pick a random number between 1 and 437 and draw what the Fates give you!
13. Draw your favorite thing.
14. Draw a dream.
15. Try to copy a painting from the 1800s or emulate one of your favorite artists (be sure to credit the original artist!).
16. Use a stencil.
17. Do a collage
18. Use ripped paper
19. Do a paint-over collage
20. Use a new art supply.
21. Check out http://www.daysoftheyear.com/ and find out what today is.  Draw it.
22. Draw a word – for the most interesting words, check out The Daily Vocabula
23. Look up “art techniques” on pinterest and try one
24. Draw your hand
25. Carve a stamp and use it to make something.
26. Go monochrome – black and white are okay additions
27. Draw something you’re afraid of and make it absurd.
28. Do a blind drawing (where you draw something with your eyes closed) or a contour drawing (when you draw something by looking at an object and following its contours without looking at the paper).
29. Do a drawing without lifting your pencil/pen off the paper.
30. Anthropomorphize something
31. Put yourself into a fairy tale
32. Pick up the closest art supply and try to find three different ways to use it.
33. Draw your favorite comic or cartoon character.
34. You know that thing you hate to draw (whether it’s buildings or people or animals or glass or clowns)?  Draw it.  Draw it 50 times if you have to.

Journaling Prompts:

1. In Art Trader Magazine issue 21, there is a HUGE list of journal prompts.  Use any of those.  Download it here.
2. Find some found poetry.
3. Do some blackout poetry.
4. Write down at least 3 things you’ve accomplished this week.  Even if it’s only ‘managed to not climb a clock tower’.
5. Write down at least 3 things you’ve learned this week.
6. Write about something funny that happened this week.
7. If you do art prompts that are tutorials, a technique you’re learning, etc., write about your experiences.
8. Write about your favorite thing that happened this week.
9. What song do you love this week?
10. Did you see a movie/watch a show/see something hilarious on youtube?  Talk about it.
11. Write one short-term goal.
12. Write one long-term goal.
13. Write a to-do list.
14. List the book/s you read this week
15. Write about something you’re excited about.
16. Write something as an imaginary person.  Check out Roz Stendahl’s International Fake Journal blog for inspiration!
17. Write down your favorite poem or a quote you love.
18. Write stream of consciousness style.
19. Look to your right and left, pick something non-permanent (like your overdue power bill.. the printout of cross stitch alphabets… pages torn out of a book in Spanish) and write about it.
20. Write about your favorite food, favorite beverage, weird cravings.
21. Write a brief message to your 10-year-old self or to yourself 10 years from now.
22. Write about something in the news.
23. Start (or continue) your bucket list, make an entry.
24. Write three random facts about someone famous or infamous who was born today.

Photography Prompts

1. Take a picture of your favorite person.
2. Take an artsy picture (i.e., something purposely emotionally evocative)
3. Take a macro (i.e. extreme closeup)
4. Go black and white or sepia
5. Look through the pictures you’ve taken this week.  Paste some in.
6. When you catch yourself rolling your eyes at yourself, take a picture of the thing that is amusing you.
7. Look around for three things that start with the same letter.  Take a picture of them in an interesting composition.
8. Take a picture of the thing that is making you really happy right now.
9. Take a picture of someone doing something awesome.
10. Take a walk and actually make an effort to look around you instead of getting lost in your own thoughts.  Take a picture of a cool thing you see.
11. Find letters (on buildings, signs, etc.) and take pictures of them.  Print them and use them to spell something in your journal, ransom-note-style.
12. Take a picture of your workdesk
13. Take a picture of graffiti
14. Experiment with light
15. If you’re a foodie, take a restaurant-menu-quality picture of a meal you’re proud of or a fancy thing you ate.  If you’re not a foodie, take a picture of your favorite food/condiment/potato chip bag/starbucks cup.
16. Find something fascinating in an abandoned or run-down building (obviously be safe while you do this..)
17. Capture an adjective
18. Go to http://photochallenge.org/ and do this week’s challenge
19. Go to http://dailypost.wordpress.com/category/photo-challenges/ and do this week’s challenge
20. Take a picture that represents the time of year/holiday/day of the week/etc.

Miscellaneous/Other:

1. Use something you’ve been holding onto for more than a year.
2. Use something you’re hoarding.
3. If there’s an art supply you’re intimidated by, force yourself to use it.
4. Try to find a new way to use something.
5. Use something you can’t stop buying.
6. Grab scraps, castoffs, or other various pieces of stuff on your table and incorporate them.
7. Paste in receipts/ticket stubs/other miscellaneous mementos of an important event
8. Paste in something that makes you happy
9. You’ve seen 101081509157809175 funny pictures/memes/shares on Facebook this week – if one really really makes you laugh, print it out and paste it in.
10. If you tried a new recipe and loved it, paste it in.  If you tried a new recipe and hated it, do the same.  You will look back and laugh, especially if you take a picture of the disaster (or better yet, your kid’s face as they taste the abomination)
11. Paste in a newspaper headline
12. Paste in a fortune cookie fortune
13. Paste in a horoscope
14. Print out a picture by your favorite artist, paste it in with their name and website address so that you’ll remember.
15. If you painted, sculpted, or otherwise created something you really love, take a picture and paste it in, especially if you gave it away or sold it!