AQ Creative Prompts Inspiration Page

"Clara" by Tommy D

Each week we commit to be creative.

A creative prompt is given and we interpret that into a drawing, a doodle, a collage, a photo…any kind of creative work that suits you. We can design a quilt, make a sculpture from marble or Sculpey, mold something with clay, paint, or write anything we want in response to the prompt. There are no rules on medium or method. The idea is to develop a regular art practice.

If your week is crazy, post a previous art piece and let that inspire you and others.

Take 5 minutes to create your response. Create a creative habit and not a masterpiece.

Update June 2016: I will not be posting new prompts, but the 365 plus I have posted will continue to be available. You can start at the beginning or at the end or explore the tag and pick and choose the prompts you like. I can’t wait to see what you make today or in 5 years! I will continue to post responses that link back to the original post.

How to Join: Feel free to join in by posting your artwork somewhere on the web (blog, website, Flickr) and then making a comment in the relevant creative prompt post’s comment area including the direct link to your artwork. You can post your responses to the AQ CPP Flickr Group. You may copy the Creative Prompt Logo image and post it on your blog or website as well. If you do that, link it to this page so others know how to join.

Violette's Creative Ideas Spot
Violette’s Creative Ideas Spot

People are inspired in different ways and the web provides a lot of different ways to be challenged creatively. Here are some additional resources for your creative work:

1000 Journals Extension: This is a social networking site on Ning for teachers which provides access to study materials created for the 1000 Journals film and project. You can look at some of the materials, but must be a member to contribute.

2 Things: Here is another creative prompt type site. The creator has a nice way of displaying different responses in a collage style. This site seems to focus on photography.

365 Pictures: This site posts a picture every day to inspire your creativity. Below the picture some kind of description and a direction is provided.

Abstract Challenge: a Yahoogroup where they respond with small quilts

Art Junk Girl: Art Junk Girl posted an entry on her blog about being busy and having a creative life. She brings up some good points that you may be able to incorporate into your life. It fits in with what Jane Davila says about making lots of art. If you do it every day, your eye will get better and you will gain confidence.

CraftSanity Creative Prompt Post: Jennifer posted an entry on her blog where she encouraged people to respond to a creative prompt. Jennifer gives good directions about responding to a creative prompt and I like the different point of view. I hope it will give you confidence that, you, too, can develop an art practice habit through your participation in my creative prompt project.

Creative Creativity A Daily Guide to Creativity and New Ideas: David Wahl is collecting and writing about creativity and creative people. Thanks to Kathy over at Everyday Bliss.

Creative Everyday: Leah’s description of the project is “I started Creative Every Day Challenge in 2008 to help infuse my life and lives of others with daily creativity.” She also hosts the Art Everyday Month Challenge. Kathy turned me on to her during on of her Creative Week posts.

Creative License: an inspiring and funny book by Danny Gregory that helps you jumpstart your creativity.

Creative Mom Podcast: Blog and podcast. Amy’s podcast manner is calm and poetic. She has a creative prompt during every podcast. I don’t see them posted on her blog, which means that you get to listen to the podcast! You can use her titles as creative prompts. Amy of CMP is the one that got me started thinking about creative prompts (Sherri just brought it to fruition!).

Creative Therapy: This is a group blog where they post a catalyst periodically. Their catalysts are more of an idea than a word. Each of the contributors posts a piece of art they have made based on the catalyst. In an effort at full disclosure, Amy of the Creative Mom Podcast is one of the contributors and I am a huge fan of her work.

Creativity Portal: This is the mother site of 365 Pictures. The site offers more than just a picture of the day including interviews with creative people and prompts via email.

Creativity Prompt: The creativity prompt is a Flickr group and also part of the Creativity Prompt blog. This blog was, apparently started in May 2009, so the AQ CPP is still older. 😉 She seems to put up a new prompt on Friday also. The author’s “prompts are designed to spark creativity in many different areas – drawing, scrapbooking, journaling, creative writing and more.” It appears that some of her prompts are little projects. Nice concept. Others are journal prompts and she uses more of a phrase than a word. The Flickr group appears to have responses to the creative prompts.

Everyday Bliss: Kathy’s post about creativity on her second (third??) round of creativity in her Everyday Bliss project caught my attention. In general, she finds relevant resources about her Bliss topic of the week and posts them. In this case she has found new ways to get past her own barriers and also writes about people and how they got past their barriers. This blog keeps getting better and better and on a later post as Creativity Week rolled around again, she wrote a great post about sparking creativity.

Everyday Matters Weekly Challenges: Drawing weekly is one way to promote your creativity. Karen Winters has a list of drawing challenges that range from “draw a microwave oven” to “draw your inner critic.” Karen calls her spot on the web The Creative Journey, a name which I love, because it is so evocative! Karen is a painter and shows some of her paintings on the main page of her blog. To be really inspired or awed, take a look at Andrea Joseph’s Flickr set that responds to The Creative Journey. Thanks to Amy at the Creative Mom Podcast for pointing this site out.

Fast Friday Quilt Challenge: This is a quilt challenge, but is similar to the Creative Prompt here at AQ. From the blog:  “Challenges are announced the 4th Friday of every month. Quilt artists have one week to complete their quilt”, though the moderators seem to be flexible on that point.

ICAD: Index Card a Day challenge is posted at Daisy Yellow. Very good idea to use index cards as a canvas.

Illustration Friday: Amy of the Creative Mom Podcast pointed me in this direction (isn’t it great to have a creative web circle??). This is a blog that offers “creative outlet/participatory art exhibit for illustrators and artists of all skill levels.” Every week a word is posted and artists of all kinds share their creative response. Sound familiar? If you don’t like my words, or need more creative prompts check out Illustration Friday.

Inspiration Odyssey: this is a GREAT, but out of print, book by Diana Swim Wessel. It is a fabulous, inspirational book that really helps develop the creative habit. Quilt book publishers, sadly, don’t produce these types of books anymore.

Journal Bliss: Creative Prompts to Unleash Your Inner Eccentric (book) – I heard the CraftSanity podcast with Violette Clark on a car trip. The podcast is one of the earlier ones and didn’t mention Violette’s new book  I haven’t seen the book as of 5/4/2009, so I can’t say much about it except that the title seems to fit our Creative Prompt theme. I will look for it at the library and write a review if I find it and read it.

LiveJournal Writer’s Block Questions: This is an archive of questions to help get your writing going. LiveJournal is a blog community/social networking site. If you are experiencing a block and writing is your medium, then this list of questions may help you. You have to be a member to answer the questions online. Since they are viewable, you can certainly use them in your own journal or sketchbook as a jumping off point.

Michael Nobbs Blog: specifically a guest post by Ryan Seslow called Spirituality, creativity, imagination and your potential. Definitely food for thought.

Milliande Art and Creativity: Milliande has a wonderful array of creativity and inspirational sections to her website. Her offerings include Art Tutorial Videos, Daily Doodle Life, Creativity Help Guides and much more. If you are not getting enough creativity here, check out Milliande. Thanks to Maureen for the tip.

Mo Willems Doodles – Mo Willems is on a one man crusade to get adults to draw. He thinks that kids stop drawing because they don’t see adults drawing. He posts a lot of different kinds of doodles. If you think you can’t draw, take a look at what he posts. He posts everything from kid drawings with misspellings to stuffed animals and chalkboard art.

OneWord – a prompt generator geared towards writers, but could be used for doodling as well. The site generator gives you a word and a box to write in.

PamDora’s Box – has a great post that includes drawings from her sketchbook that lead up to a finished quilt.

The Quilted Librarian has a Creativity Questionaire that may inspire you to write and think about your creative source. The questions could be taken as creative prompts. I see them as prompts to inspire writing, which would in turn inspire visual creativity, however, I am sure they could be visual prompts as well.

Quilter’s Home had an article in the July/August 2008 issue on creativity. I will include some of the resources from that article on this page. Check out the article, though for the complete list.

  • The Bright Idea Deck: breakthrough to brilliance by Mark McElroy – 78  illustrated cards that teach you to
  • Creative Whack Pack by Roger Von Oech  – a deck of cards. I haven’t looked at this myself, but it sounds like a good idea.
  • Thinkpak by Michael Michalko  – “a brainstorming deck…which will help you take your problems and blocks and change them into something else.” QH says that you will need to learn to use this deck

Quilt Robin’s Creative Journey: Doodle a DayDiet post and page. While I don’t really consider these anything less than full fledged works of art, she calls them doodles and I respect that.

See * Draw * Quilt * Learn: Sarah, of the Art and Quilting in Camden blog set up this group blog as an extension of her New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain drawing project. This blog is all about learning to draw, which, by extension, is about learning to see. Read about her vision and the inspiration in the first post.

Self Portrait Challenge: A years long project, which started out as Self Portrait Tuesday, celebrating self portraits. They are migrating to a Flickr group for a time.

Susie Monday had an entry on her blog, which showed a group making designs out of shapes cut from construction paper. I think this would be a great way to respond to a prompt. You could also rip the paper.

Thinkertoys: a Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques

Writer’s Digest Writing Prompts Page:  If you want to respond with words to the prompts, this page might get you in practice.

The Writer’s Idea Book by Jack Heffron: the reviews for this book ar mediocre, so at some point I may take it off the list. I think a variety of options for creativity is better.

The Write Prompts: a Squidoo ‘lens’ focused on writing prompts, but useful for general creativity as well.

Violette's Doodle Girl
Violette’s Doodle Girl

By clicking on the links on the Prompts compilation page, you can see the original prompt and all of the contributions in the comments section.

2009 Prompts

Thanks, etc.

Thanks go to a number of people for making this project possible:

  • Jeanne – for being a constant source of encouragement and good advice
  • Julie – http://highfibercontent.bogspot.com – for being supportive of the project
  • Mary – for starting this whole creative thing in me
  • Paul – for not objecting too strenuously
  • Sherri D -http://walkerlady.blogspot.com – for the inspiration and encouragement
  • Violette Clark – http://www.violettesfolkart.com – for allowing me to use a couple of her doodles
  • My blog readers – you make it all worthwhile
  • My creative prompt participants – by participating you make me feel like the extra effort is worthwhile.

Thanks!

Creative Prompt Project Mentions:

  • Vicki Welsh’s Whistlestop Webtour v.32 – this is an undated article, but was in December 2009 sometime, on Machine Quilter’s Resource page about creative discipline. It provides resources, ideas and there is a forum to discuss creative discipline.

24 thoughts on “AQ Creative Prompts Inspiration Page”

  1. Wow. What a great site. I’m not an artist or illistrator, but I do love to do machine embroidery, quilting & sewing. I think some of your artwork would make fantastic machine embroidery designs. You and your talented friends need to consider partnering with machine embroidery digitizers/businesses to have your artwork digitized for machine embroiderers to buy. I think it would be a great business partnership….I’d buy it!

  2. Pingback: Artquiltmaker Blog
  3. I stumbled across your site while looking for info –ink jet printing on fabric.
    Your site was very inspirational, and provided me with some ideas.
    Still looking for anyone that might be doing Ink jet printing on large scale fabrics. IF you know of anyone please contact me.

    Sincerely,
    Deanna Urs

    1. Hi Deanna,
      I only know about Spoonflower and I don’t know if that is inkjet printing, but I doubt it. Hope you find what you are looking for and let the readers here know.

  4. What a great idea, to prompt creativity weekly. Nobody practices arts or talents these days because they are so busy and with the internet, frankly, nobody needs to be creative. Thanks for supporting creativity! My art of choice is sewing and a little bit of
    machine embroidery designs. Thanks for the push!

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