The Sketchbook Random Drawing Prompts and Art Challenge

Staring at your blank sketchbook page? Our random drawing prompts tool is here to maybe nudge you in a productive direction. It is descriptive word based, if you would prefer a visual prompt, the photo prompt or museum prompt on our other two art prompt pages generate a randomized photo or let you view a museum object from the Art Institute of Chicago.

Our tool provides a subject, atmosphere, approach, and reframing prompt to help you get past the fear of the blank page.

Just click New Page to generate a unique descriptive combination. If you land on an idea you love, like a specific art style or subject, click the Circle to keep it safe while you reshuffle the rest. New ideas will be added periodically to mix it up.

What does a good picture need?

A picture can tell a story, and a good picture is worth a thousand words. If you instinctively select components, the rest follows. This is why AI art lacks soul: the parts are there, but they lack the human touch, the practice of creating something whose meaning goes beyond simple selection.

Of course, like all good things, this art of selection takes practice and discipline. You must create even when you don’t feel like it, or when you don’t have any ideas. Discipline handles the first point, but ideas are harder. Every artist must work to develop a smooth and consistent way to generate art quickly. It is a passion, yes, but there must be a finished product as well.

This is where our random drawing prompts tool can be of assistance. If you find yourself staring at a blank sheet of paper, an art utensil in hand, with no idea what to draw, try our prompt generator. It mimics inspiration, and with luck and work, you might come up with something unique. Our tool provides prompts for subject, setting, approach, and reframing.

So, what does a good picture need?

Subject

First, all pictures have a subject, not just a mundane one, though it might be that at first glance, but an object that conveys vision. Van Gogh drew potatoes and created a masterpiece that accurately depicted the simple Dutch countryside. Draw a million potatoes, and not only will you draw really good potatoes, but who knows where they will lead. It is the inspiration that makes art come to life, not the subject, and that be anything, from simple to complex.

Atmosphere

Where does your subject live? Where would you find it? This is the atmosphere of a sketch. Do our Dutch peasants sit down to a laden table, or do they sit in a hovel of impoverishment? Is the light the pleasant sun of summer or the bleakness of winter? Atmosphere is the setting, and it tells the story not in words but in the spaces around the subject.

Approach

Approach is a celebration of how you, as the artist, can change your attitude toward the process of creation. Art, when it comes down to it, is the artist’s vision frozen in time, a hard thing to pull out of the brain continually. This prompt helps you look at the work with different eyes.

Reframe

Lastly, get the picture in your mind’s eye, set it, and reframe it. The reframing prompt asks you to look at the subject and think about what it is, and what else it could be. There are a million ways to think of a potato; what is your vision? That is art: to convey the essence of something in surprising ways.