Challenging Painting Ideas for Every Skill Level

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Whether yous're looking for design ideas, artistic ideas, painting ideas, or color schemes, you lot've come to the right place. There are so many paint techniques out there that it tin can exist confusing. That's not a bad thing, really, but it can exist hard to observe that 1 thing that works for you.

Y'all might similar to start by figuring out the color combinations you lot intend to apply, which volition help you lot decide on the atmosphere you lot're going for. To inspire yourself to come upwards with swell fine art ideas, you've got to ask yourself the deeper questions, even if y'all don't effigy out the answers while y'all even so have a blank canvas. Find out whether your temper will be dark, or playful, or magical, and you'll gravitate toward meaningful colour ideas organically.

Some other tools that are at your disposal are texture variety, the size of your brushes(and therefore your brushstrokes), whether your finished piece will have a matte or gloss terminate, and choosing an interesting backdrop. Determine early how y'all'll be blending your subjects into the background, or using hard edges and brighter tones to disconnect your subject from its surroundings.

Getting Motivated with Art Claiming Communities

Nosotros're non merely going to talk well-nigh challenging painting ideas in this post, but we're also going to talk almost some cracking customs art challenges you see happening around social media communities. I simply couldn't figure out how to get that all in the championship. Personally, I e'er find out well-nigh these challenges afterward they've already started. Well, I'm sick of using that as an excuse, so in one department, you get to follow along as I compile a short list of absurd fine art challenges that I think would be a swell learning experience for artists of any skill level.

Community fine art challenges are amazing for a few reasons. Showtime, they get you practicing. Second, there are artists of all skill levels out at that place giving it their all-time. Merely the best function is, you lot'll see plenty of people out at that place who don't even have YOUR level of skills. It makes yous see how far you've already progressed, and that'south when you realize the pros do the same thing over and over during their lives, and once upon a time they were at the level you're at now. Yes, that looks like a long road when yous're merely kickoff, only every moment you spend in practise is like a pace further downwardly that road.

"Wow!" you might be thinking. And y'all would be right.

Accept a Wild Brainstorming Session for Painting Ideas

But earlier we get into that list of painting ideas, we're going to come up with some off-the-wall ideas that y'all might not have thought to endeavour. And even if you don't similar these ideas, yous're an artist … your job is literally to utilize other people'due south ideas like a trampoline (Painting Idea #1). Well, not literally … I don't wanna be responsible for whatever of you lot out at that place who might effort stomping on someone's caput.

1 affair that's actually fun to paint is a jumble of identical objects. My personal favorite subject to pigment is stacks of solid gold bars(#3). But since those aren't ever readily available, I'll list out some other objects to use instead.

Cheap Buys to Get the Creative Juices Flowing

Candy is an easy selection, because it elicits an automated nostalgia for the childhood delight yous would have felt nigh seeing a big pile of candy when y'all were young. And because nostalgia is an emotion congenital around memories of the past, a painting that centers on the unproblematic and archetype lighting/setting will help push that emotion frontwards. And if you keep that emotional connectedness in your mind as you paint, the emotion will echo through your brushwork and color choices.

Another great thing about painting a agglomeration of elementary shapes, is that one time you practice a few of them, you'll be a pro at painting these identical candies, and you can experiment with how to all-time make them look succulent to the kid in all your painting's viewers. Leaving a few empty wrappers, or taking bites out of one of the candies, can support the idea that these painted candies are irresistible.

Have a page from your ain life, and use something you're familiar with. Or practise information technology my favorite way, which is to look for book merchandise at clearance prices. You tin find an array of objects on clearance at the most random places, but if everything else fails, at that place will be something shiny and cheap at the dollar store that you can buy in bulk.

Paint Your Favorite Toys

Legos are another easy thought. You don't really even demand to build anything with them.. But I have e'er liked separating legos by their colors. What if y'all arrange those legos in color-coded piles and shapes, as if they're arranging themselves. This thought could most have a deeper meaning, as if you the creative person were trying to prove how your childhood creativity blends effortlessly into the fashion you apply colour as a painter. Information technology'due south a unifying technique, and you should certainly find more ways to make your discipline here even more personalized, but I'll leave that to you.

An empty chair is e'er a solid subject for a painting. Vincent Van Gogh is famous for having sent paintings of empty chairs to his brother by post. Vincent wrote messages too, of course, only the painting subject itself speaks volumes. If there are whatsoever empty chairs in your house, await at them as if the chair represents the absence of someone, temporarily or permanently. Yous can too phase a scene with that "absent presence" motif, past calculation a few unproblematic props near the chair, like a tabular array, a lamp, a basket. Brand the scene suggest someone specific by placing objects identifiable to them in the basket, on the table, maybe a "favorite" blanket draped over the chair. Add hats, scarves, gloves, or just get wild and pile your shoes on and around the chair, as if the chair is attempting to embody the clutter of closet-space.

A Sea of Ideas

I retrieve there are a number of jumping off points in there, and though we could go at examples all day, hopefully you can conjure up an idea of how a agglomeration of identical things you have lying around can tell a story. If you can take care of this little creative bit of visual story-telling, your art volition projection an emotional experience regardless of how technically skilled you are. Because in the end, fine art needs to have soul, not robot precision.

I'll get out information technology to you lot to detect 50 traffic cones to adjust around the neighbor'southward auto, who like it or non, will seem similar a notoriously bad commuter in your painting. Yous might want to take hold of your dirty laundry basket, and lay piles of clothes effectually the k, representing those taken in the rapture, or vanished in an unforecasted alien kidnapping raid. Make sure to include some funny lights in the sky either mode.

Rather than leaving your booty sweat out in the yard to attract raccoons as you endeavour to pigment the sensation of being left behind, simply have a skilful await at the surreal scene you lot've laid out, snap a few reference photos, and run across what happens. The important part is to depict attention to the surrealism of the vesture piles by painting the scene on a sunny day, or decorating the environment with party favors, to become the sense that something is not right here. Or wait for the raccoons, because that could make for a pretty wild atmosphere as well.

"If I could say information technology in words at that place would exist no reason to paint."

-Edward Hopper

The bespeak is, cull an object that when scattered in a certain place, blueprint or direction, tells a story. Like a trail of rose petals leading around a corner or into a room. I flim-flam to making one of these emotions into a central motif, is to do your part to limited the emotion through your concrete painting. If the gesture is angry, your brush strokes might exist slashing and exaggerated, your color choices all blacks and blood reds. If the gesture is friendly and kind, or gentle, let your brushwork reverberate a soft plumage quality, where the forms nigh alloy together in harmony.

I really promise some of these ideas and their explanations triggered a unlike kind of thought process for yous when choosing your next painting subject. Hopefully some of you think the way I do, that narrative and storytelling might not brand y'all meliorate at painting, but information technology's one way of making sure you sell some work forth the fashion, as you're practicing and improving.

So, permit's motility on to the research stage. Roll the montage.

<<No montage in the upkeep, sad.>>

A List of Challenges to Jumpstart Your Painting Ideas

Oh, wow, there are Then many … yeah, so I put together a list of the ones that I thought were cool, but at that place are style bigger lists of all the challenges. In that location seem to be two kinds of challenges: the kind you simply take upon yourself for good do, and perhaps proceeds a following by producing regularly, and the kind that is actually hosted either past an artist, or an artists clan. I've provided links to well-nigh of what I found, then if whatsoever of these sound fun to you lot, of grade you'll desire to do more than in-depth enquiry on the rules and details.

Drawlloween

I just missed this one past again, not finding out about it until information technology had already started. It really does pay off knowing a month in advance yous're nearly to kickoff a claiming. It sucks scrambling around for materials and spare fourth dimension if you weren't prepared for it. The name is pretty self-explanatory.

Inktober

Inktober sets a restriction on your artwork by taking abroad color and leaving you with a single value: black. I find painting with black to exist kinda fun, but you can use any medium as long as you follow the general guidelines.

Mermay

Otherwise known equally "Wrap Your Girlfriend's Legs In A Dissimilar Blanket Every Day" -Month, if y'all live near the body of water, you lot've got a huge step upwards with this claiming. Just endeavour to notice out what the local mermaids' favorite foods are, and maybe they'll hold still long enough to let you pigment their picnics.

Draw This In Your Style

This challenge is ordinarily beingness held by individual artists who sometimes offering prizes and notoriety by asking you to reproduce the creative person's work or characters in your own manner. The artist gets to view all these artistic alternatives to their characters, and the winners get to talk mad smack.

Strada Challenge

The Strada Claiming is an RNG claiming, aimed at improving artists by forcing them to piece of work from life, though the likelihood of getting picked for an easel is slim to zero. Even so, it's one of the more than useful challenges out there if your true purpose is to push your own skill limit.

ArtVsArtist

This is non then much a claiming, equally an instagram artist's way of introducing their own face up at the center of 8 of their own pieces. Imagine watching the Brady Bunch except it's just Alice alone in the business firm with all her oil paintings.

DrawThisAgain

Some people love this challenge, because it has a real emotional entreatment. The idea is to pull out one of your terrible drawings from whatever number of years back, and redraw information technology using all of the skills you've acquired since. It'due south absurd looking dorsum at something, especially if it was terrible, and letting your childhood self pass the torch to you, the more skillful and mature yous.

StyleChallenge

This one is mainly for cartoonists, because you accept a single character, and illustrate it in a style reminiscent of viii other artists whose work you're influenced past. This is a pretty big pace for most artists, considering even though I'g influenced by Eugene Delacroix, you won't detect me creating a painting anywhere nearly reminiscent of his style or mastery.

My bespeak existence, if you're at the point where you tin can name viii influences in your area of focus, then accommodate your own cosmos for their visual worlds, you're probably neck-deep-familiar with your own polished style of illustration, and this is not so much a challenge, equally a mode for you lot to prove off. Get out of my experimental amateur learning infinite, y'all professionals!

Merely kidding, please stay. Tell united states of america ALL your secrets …

The Hundred Heads Challenge

A hundred heads in 10 days, using whatsoever medium you similar. ten a day sounds tough. I imagine by head #100, you lot've got a lot better grasp of the portrait than when you lot started. A tasty challenge indeed!

Smaugust

Here's a link describing Smaugust, merely if you know anything nigh dragons, you're probably already on your way to their page. Dragons are cool, but I didn't really go interested in dragons until I began seeing them depicted as noble and intelligent pets, or companions. I guess it was easier to imagine a small dragon considering there were cats and dogs whose behaviors remain recognizable fifty-fifty if another beast, like a dragon, is performing them.

Magical March

Something to do with Sailor Moon? Or perhaps merely do magical scenes for a calendar month. Information technology's worth looking into.

Monster March/ Kaijune

I grouped these two because they're both almost creating monsters for a month. I estimate a calendar month of monsters wasn't sufficient.

Whatever Monsters want … Monsters become …

Junicorn

I tin vaguely remember watching The Last Unicorn animated movie every bit a child, and being kind of terrified by the real danger the characters found themselves in. So yeah, terrified of unicorns.

Doggust

Dogs. Meh.

Dinovember

Why didn't I keep those James Gurney books I had when I was a kid?

The Hundred Twenty-four hour period Project

The 100 Day Project is open to the artist's preferences, and then basically, sign upwards to do whatsoever yous desire for 100 days, and reap that notoriety of success or failure. I hateful, why first a challenge if there's any intention of non following it through to the end?

Daily Paintworks

Daily Paintworks has a huge list of people participating in the community'south monthly challenges, and let's you create your own profile to mail your work in their community. The winners go a lot of notoriety, and of course, winning these challenges is a start stride in testing yourself for greater achievement.

The Brooklyn Art Library

This is a really cool project to participate in. Basically, you sign upwards, they ship y'all a 28-pg sketchbook, and you ship it back to their library of artists. Filled with artwork, hopefully. Sounds awesome right?

Tinkerlab Art Challenge

This challenge keeps things pretty open, with 365 word prompts spread out over a whole year. If you can manage this challenge, you'll have grown so much every bit an creative person, that mean solar day 365 won't even look similar the same clumsy creative person that started on day 1. Skilful luck if y'all try to have on something finished every day for a year, it's a huge investment of fourth dimension, struggle, and materials.

So there you have it, a ton of painting ideas, and if you all the same haven't found the right subject, it never hurts to bench yourself to the studio, and brush up on your skills with one of these fun challenges. Sometimes a great idea can't come to you unless you're at the level you lot want to be on to achieve it. I've got some amazing goldfish paintings in heed for future me to do. But until then, I'll but write these blog posts where I trail off randomly at the end. Like, trust me, I'd dearest to be painting correct now, only fine art has so much overhead. Why am I withal writing? No one is going to read til the end, they're going to click on one of those amazing links and whoosh, vanish like they were never here. Life in the fast lane …

Is anyone out in that location like, a web log-mail OCD completionist? I mean, if I just kept writing, are you lot now obligated to go to the end? This is probably actually annoying you correct at present I'll bet. BWAH-Ha-hahahahaaaaa

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