Get Inspired: 10 Great Articles and 4 Great Tools

Get Inspired. That’s essentially what I said in my previous post. So I figured it’s only fair that I offer you a few suggestions to get that going.

Get Outside for Inspiration

If you ask me, the best way to get inspired is to go outdoors. In addition to being great for the imagination, taking a walk around the neighborhood or a hike in the woods can do so much good for health. There’s just no way that hanging out inside, staring at screens can ever match nature.

Of course, I get it: there are times when we can’t get outside. I’ve lived in several regions where winter blizzards or windy rains can make being under a roof seem like the best place to be. For those times, I’m offering a few suggestions.

Scientific Inspiration

Most of my suggestions will come from the place of sparking our imaginations for art projects. However, as this article points out, scientific inspiration is so important, too. Check it out here.

One of my favorite online resources is the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. As you’ll see, the awesome posts on this site are almost always backed by a recent scientific study that intersects with the “greater good” of humanity. It doesn’t get much better than that. As an excellent example, here’s a post by the always-inspiring Scott Barry Kaufman: Is Artistic Inspiration Contagious?

Getting Inspired By and For Art

Here you go — a list of some starting points for spurring your imagination and creative juices. Check out a few or bookmark them all.

• The power of dreams for artistic inspiration
• Successful artists tell how they get inspired
• Tips to shake away creative burnout and find artistic inspiration
• Many ways for artists to find new means of inspiration
• The comprehensive guide to finding inspiration for art
• Art inspiration for the weekend
• And finally, if 10 (including these two) is not a long enough list for you, here’s 20 links and another to 50 websites!

Plus Four Tools and Games

As I was researching this post, I discovered these great tools and games for getting inspired. The first one is a quiz that results in connecting you with a female artist whose story you might find inspiring. Check it out.

The second one is from Sophia. It is a tutorial on the variety of ways artists find a starting point for their art. It’s like a mini-art-class that you can take at your leisure. Many of the examples are very intriguing. Another site, Quizlet, also has a tutorial on where creative people have found a starting point for their imaginations. There’s a whole menu (see the “Intro Into Art” image) of different ways to learn about these which is a very cool acknowledgment that each person learns differently.

The fourth and final tool: I found this website dedicated to art prompts. Though it says it is intended for drawing art, it seems to me that it applies just as readily to painting, poetry, and almost any other art form. See if it inspires you!

Keep It Going

I do hope that you found some resources for finding inspiration in your creative world. And if you didn’t find what you needed in these, maybe it’s time to go outdoors and make some inspiration of your own.