Ten Minute Artist is the leading newsletter for building a daily creative habit through drawing and journal prompts, encouragement, perspective, meditations and practice advice for living a more creative life. If you want to build and keep a daily drawing habit, this is for you. New posts every weekday
Our Brains Are Meaning Making Machines
If you wrote a word next to a shape our brains would naturally make it make sense.
So what if we used this superpower, and gave our brains two unrelated things to figure out. We could even prepare a collection of unrelated things as prompts to pull out whenever we need a little jolt. Or just want to see what our brain comes up with.
Pick a shape. Pick a word. Now see if your brain can connect the two.
Let’s do some work for future you.
There is going to come a time when you just want to draw but don’t want to think what to draw, so today we’re going to do the thinking in advance. We’re going to think of a few words or names of things that might be fun to draw.
And we’re also going to come up with some unrelated shapes, we’re going to put these names and shapes on cards.
So when you need a quick thing to draw, you can pick a name and a shape and use them as prompts.
Was it difficult thinking of things to draw and do you have shapes that you are naturally drawn to?
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
Word and Shape Prompt Cards
Cut 8 namecard sized pieces of paper or card in half. On one stack write a word you would enjoy drawing on each card, on the other draw a random shape on each card.
Shuffle and draw a card from each pile at random, or use this as your prompt…
If you want to share your drawings with the Ten Minute Artist community you can do so here:
By making your own cards you could come up with endless combinations and variations, you might even combine 3 or 4 cards to create an image. Creating little tools like these is like doing future you a favor.
Adam Ming is a start up co-founder turned children’s illustrator at 40, he’s illustrated nearly 20 books. He writes generously about keeping a daily drawing habit and the early years of breaking in and working as a freelance illustrator.
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