Kick-Start Your Art Journal (Part 8)

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."
~ Mark Twain

Next time your mind is blank and you need a nudge, pick one of these ideas and JUST DO IT. Skip the "What should I do" phase, roll up your sleeves and get messy.

<A Life Examined> Consider this idea from Creative Liberty: document your day in a series of cartoon images, photographs and more. Make a page with your documentation in any odd order you wish.

<Stairsteps> Paint a page with black gesso. Collage the page with any medium or image, selected based on color alone. Consider pale thread, B&W images, pastel colors, colored pencils, light neocolors or watercolors, ephemera, product packaging. Build in any direction you wish, starting with pale, muted or neutrals and building to saturated vivid colors! Work from the outside in, like a frame. Or work top to bottom, like a set of stairs. What happens to colors on black gesso?

<Lie> Build a page around an elaborate and completely untrue statement. A massive, intricate, devious lie. Or a little white lie. (It's your page.) Think wild embellishment and wording.

<Circularity> Take in the wonder of Kandinsky's Squares with Concentric Rings and use the concept of concentric circles on your page. Our Neocolor Circles project was inspired by this style.

<Texture> Create a page using a texture, with texture, with images of texture, or inspired by the patterns within something textured, like fabric or leaves. Pop over to Textured Inspiration for photo prompts and links.

<Black & White> Imagine the possibilities of limiting yourself to B&W, but using a variety of media. Combine photographs with charcoal with gesso with pencil with graphics... Kandinsky's Trente might interest you!

<The Wizard of Oz> Incorporate the colors, thoughts or imagery that your favorite scene from the movie evokes. Create one of the characters with scrap paper, or use the mood of the scene as your muse.

More inspiration:

• Check out the entire series of prompts to Kick-Start Your Art Journal!
  
• Art Journaling 101: Some Ideas to Get Started