Artist Date ideas, volume 1

I am reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and I have started with my morning pages. I was one of the (I suppose) few people who actually looked forward to doing them, but over the two weeks since I’ve started them, I only have about a 50% success rate. Sometimes, as classes at the co-op have started recently, sleep just became a priority. Sometimes, like today, I just decided to do other things.

Another component to this program (that I am not doing — YET) is taking myself on artist dates. This is something I’m looking forward to, but I haven’t made time to actually do it yet. You might have picked up on me liking lists, though, so as a way to get myself fired up, I thought I’d make a new one. There are dozens of artist date lists out there with great ideas, and I’ve tried not to repeat theirs (except for a few, which I’ve linked, because those entire lists are worth a look, as are many others), simply because sometimes you need fresh ideas. That said, I very much look forward to the ones found on many lists, like visiting a farmer’s market and sitting in a cafe.

Create a nature table with found natural items that celebrate the seasons.
Have a caricature drawn.
Contact your favorite creators on Etsy (I got this idea from this fantastic list that I saw linked multiple places. It’s a wonderful list, and I’m trying not to just command + c command + v it)
Press flowers.
Mix different watercolors to make as many different shades of beautiful as you can. Then make some ugly shades.
Do a tarot reading for a stuffed animal and use it to journal on – from the perspective of the stuffed animal.
Dip autumn leaves in wax and thread them to make a bunting.
Visit an odd place from atlas obscura (like the doll head trail) (sorry about the disproportionate and badly-timed references to dolls)
Do a cross stitch.
People watch at the mall.
Or, I like #27 on this list involving people watching in a fancy hotel lobby.
Use a pinterest board like this for some funny writing prompts.
Create a commonplace book that is practical for keeping in a purse or bag that goes with you.
Use story dice to imagine a story. Or, ask the story dice questions as if they were tarot cards.
Watch a telenovela, Bollywood movie, or Korean soap.
Watch a silent film. Before it starts, pick some music to play with it. Try to see if you can adjust the music to go along with events in the movie.
Attend an open Powwow
Do an Artist’s Assignment.
Tie dye tea towels.
I kind of stumbled into this one because my son plays and we now have a family campaign, but it might be hard if you don’t already know people who play D&D – but participate in a campaign.
If you do that, imagine your character’s backstory.
Pretend to be your favorite character from anything, from any time of your life. When I was little I idolized Deanna Troi from Star Trek: TNG and when I channel her, I feel poised and pretty.
Create a map of an imaginary place.
Make a list of 101 questions you have.
Watch all of The Simpsons’ Couch gags.
Blackout poetry. (Ok, I saw this one on several lists, but because I made blackout poetry lately, I decided to include it.)
Try a Bob Ross tutorial.
Rent an AirBnB for one night and spend the time there daydreaming.
Research your family history. This one is found pretty commonly on other lists, but I’m including it because I’ve enjoyed daydreaming up stories about how certain ancestors ended up where they are, or why they died, or how they met.
Volunteer at a nursing home as a companion.
Play around with some makeup. Maybe watch some tutorials, or maybe just wing it. (See what I did there?) Go with as wild a look as you can imagine.
Watch the squirrels in your yard and imagine their conversations.
Look up places on Google Street view that show a completely different life to what you’re accustomed.
Do some (non-littering) eyebombing or yarnbombing. If possible, stay nearby to monitor reactions.
Narrate your pet’s day as if you were David Attenborough.
Plan a full moon dinner. You can make the full moon dinner itself your artist’s date, or just the planning of it, to enjoy it with friends.
While you’re at it, you should dance in the moonlight. Around a fire, if possible. While making moon water.
If you live near a city, ride its public transportation, even if it’s not efficient.
Try some amateur kitsungi, or take a workshop in the art.
Save up items like paper towel rolls, medicine bottles with lids, milk jug lids, and the like. Create a sculpture with your trash.
Experience a mindfulness labrynth.
Or make your own labrynth with found sticks and stones.
Visit an apiary.
Play the word association game with yourself, and create a work of art with it. Write a word on a piece of paper and color the area around it. Then write one word the first word reminds you of and draw a line connecting the two. Continue with more and more words. When you find that a word is repeated, just make it connect with both words. Continue on until you run out of room.
Library scavenger hunt. Maybe I’ll make one to share here, but the concept is to make ahead a list of things to find in books, and go through the library until you find the things. Like, find a protagonist who wears glasses (you might find Harry Potter).
Save shipping boxes and make a cardboard city.
Many lists include Geocaching. If you do that, then take it a step further. Create a trackable with a unique mission. Don’t be discouraged if it gets lost and stolen before it completes its mission – that always happens. You can “grab it” once you’ve confirmed it’s lost, and create a new trackable with its number, and give it a new start.
Or, maybe you find you want to create a Geocache yourself! Keep in mind that it does take a commitment to maintain it, and people will likely destroy it. Some good places are to contact the owner of the nearest little free library and see if you can create a false ceiling in their shelf. You can hide the cache there and can likely even connect it to the inside of the LFL somehow. You could make it literary themed. You can also seek permission to hide one in a park, and create any theme you’d like.
Or, instead (or in addition to) Geocaching, make your own stamp and then go Letterboxing!
Or, make your own stamp from a potato and stamp a pattern! (I wouldn’t use this one for letterboxing, though.)
Make an altoid tin diorama. I have always wanted to do this.
Read some wordless picture books. (I love Flotsam by David Wiesner, as well as books by Aaron Becker.)
Capture the entire alphabet in photos. I’ve done this with literal signs, but you can also do it like they do in those pictures where they find letters in the arm rests of park benches or a strangely shaped twig.
Play the glass harmonica: fill glasses of different sizes with different amounts of water and keep fine tuning them until they sound just right, and you can play something that pleases you.
If you are like me and so uncool that you still have a textured ceiling, gaze at it like you would at clouds, trying to find characters or scenes or faces or animals in it. I guess this wouldn’t work for popcorn ceilings but the slapbrush texture works pretty well, and stipplebrush might too.
Keep a dream journal.
Create a parallel universe journal, where you write from a parallel universe. You could make this parallel universe as if you were another version of yourself, as if you lived on another planet, or as if certain things we take for granted are not as they are now but slightly different in some surreal way.
Acid-Base Painting: You can make an acid-base indicator by whirling some red cabbage in the blender with some water until it’s completely and totally liquid. Pour this into a glass casserole and soak some acid-free multimedia paper in the liquid for about 5 minutes. Hang this somewhere to dry (it will drip a deeply colorful dye, so hang it above a tarp or outside). Meanwhile, prepare some lemon juice in one container, and some baking soda stirred into water into another. Vinegar can sub for lemon juice, and dye-free antacid tablets will work instead of baking soda. Or use them all (just don’t mix them (or do!). Use a paintbrush to paint on your indicator paper with your liquids.
While you have the baking soda and vinegar out why not just make a volcano?
Make a terrarium.
Read up about caring for a bonsai and if you feel you can be dedicated to it, adopt one.
Make some cyanotype art. Consider using ferns, flowers, and cookie cutters, and/or come up with your own.
Use some tempera to paint on one half of a piece of paper. Then fold the paper to make a reflection of what you already painted.
Design your own miniature zen garden using a small tray or box, sand, pebbles, and figurines. Arrange the elements in a pleasing way.
Find an old, neglected, and/or seemingly worthless item at a thrift shop and give it new life.
Play with shadows. You could have a shadow puppet show, or you could color the shadows of items placed in the sun, different colors at different times.
Learn self-massage techniques and use them.
Make native plant seed bombs.
Learn about tasseography, the art of reading tea leaves. Then gaze at the tea leaves in your cup and interpret your findings.
Find a legal graffiti wall near you and try your hand at it.
Experiment with making paints from nature. Strain mashed berries, soak different nuts and barks in water, test out your clay soil, and find other ways to make paints. Then use them to paint a nature scene. Bonus: paint with pine needles and flowers.
Make spore prints.
Study the night sky and learn the constellations. Then create your own constellations and map them.
Create myths about your constellations.
Using a guide to local plants, make a tea or infusion out of ingredients you have foraged (and are very sure you know what you have).
Buy some cheap canvas sneakers and decorate them. Wear them proudly.
Make easy slime with 2 parts school glue and 1 part laundry starch (you might have to add up to 2 parts laundry starch – it just depends on mysteries of the universe.) Add glitter or food dye as desired. Play with said slime. Or make oobleck with 3 parts corn starch and 2 parts water. I made some for a back to school day at the co-op and I couldn’t believe how many parents stayed playing with it even after the kids had moved on.
Dress up some used jelly or oui yogurt jars with burlap ribbon and acorns and baker’s twine to make vases or tealight holders.
This is one I’m stealing from another such list, but I cannot find it to give credit. So if you do, please tell me. Go to an event that is totally unlike you. For example, if you would normally choose going to the symphony, go to a monster truck rally.
Look at a work of art for a very long time. Notice everything you possibly can about it. (A few suggestions for art to look at for this: The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali; The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch; Composition VII by Kandinsky; Netherlandish Proverbs by Peter Bruegel the Elder; No Woman, No Cry by Chris Ofill; The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by Damien Hirst.)
Street fashion observation and maybe sketching. Go somewhere that you can easily sit and observe people walking by. A street cafe would work perfectly if that’s available. Specifically observe the fashion you see in people who walk by.
Watch fashion week online.
Attend a car show. You might want to imagine the history of each car, even possibly asking the owners what they can tell you about that particular car. Who owned it first? Where? How many miles are on it? What was restoring it like? Where do they drive it?
Read some fanfic.
Read some middle grades fiction. I’m suggesting this particular age group because a lot of adults enjoy YA reads, but middle grades are a different thing entirely. You may find them to be too optimistic, and that’s fair, but I love the representation of different cultures and situations in middle grades lit.
Destroy your morning pages in a creative way. Your morning pages need to be completely private so you can really empty out your brain and decongest your feelings. I feel confident that no one in my household would knowingly invade my privacy, but there’s always the chance that someone could accidentally run across it. I think it’s better to destroy them. So, create a ritual around it. Maybe you want to burn them. Someone I knew used to soak their private writings in dishwater. I suppose that might clog up the sink, but you could use a screen and use it to make handmade paper. (mix it with some found items from a nature walk!). You could cut it into strips, weave it together in a new order, and paint it.
Make nature creatures out of leaves, sticks, acorns, flowers, and other natural found objects. This blog has a lot of good examples.
Many lists list watching planes take off, which is a great idea. If you’re not near a major airport (I’m only 45 minutes from ATL, but it’s hard to actually get close enough to see them take off), you can use an app like flightaware or flightradar24 to watch the planes that fly over or near you. Imagine the people or cargo on each plane. Who is excited to be there? Who is on vacation and who is traveling for business? What is the strangest item someone is bring as a carry-on to that destination? Who is least happy to be making this journey? You could also zoom out and find other flights that spark imagination. Sometimes I look at flights near major news events.
Design some jewelry for your houseplants. I think my monstera wants earrings.
Find a way to safely see your world from above. Depending on your situation, that may mean heading to the roof, using a drone, climbing a mountain, or making sure you get the window seat on your next plane ride. If you’re feeling especially adventurous and spendy, a helicopter tour, hot air balloon ride, or skydiving trip could create this opportunity.
Make a ton of texture rubbings. Ideas: a brick wall, tree bark, corduroy upholstery, your textured ceiling, a sidewalk, leaves, a basket, the floor right before you sweep, vinyl siding, shingles . . .
Find some places where grass grows in the cracks of the sidewalk. Make little creatures with grass hair. As seen here. (As far as I can tell, the link giving credit to the original artist doesn’t work.) (More work by David Zinn)
Record interesting sounds and patch them together to create a soundscape.
Go to kiva.org and read about the ventures of people applying for microfinancing loans. Of course, you’re going to want to make a loan. But also, I especially like to imagine the lives of the people who ask for loans as part of a collective. I imagine the meetings of the collectives, the updates on how their ventures are going, the daily interactions with the chickens bought or the excitement when the clothes to sell arrive or the people the taxi will transport after its improvements or the excitement of a first harvest or the nerves of a first day of school.
Go randonauting.
Do a virtual challenge, even if it’s of your own making. There’s the Walk to Mordor, but when I was in 4th grade, our class did the “run/walk across North Carolina challenge,” and we logged distances we ran or walked until, all combined, our class had crossed from Manteo to Murphy. You could pick any route and log miles until you’ve virtually crossed it. As described, this would be several different artist dates, or you could pick one walking session for the artist date, or the planning of the thing could be the artist date. If you’re covering a real geographical area, or even if you’re covering a fantasy one from a book, make sure you mark milestones. You might research interesting stops along the way and plan ways to celebrate that are appropriate to the milestones. You could walk across an ocean and learn about different islands you could stop off on, enjoy a day of peaceful relaxation in a forest when you get to Rivendell on the way to Mordor, or learn bite-sized bits of history along any route.
Bookcrossing.com is not quite defunct, but its maps don’t work on my computer. Still, it might be fun to release some of your books into the wild and see where they go. I will make a note in mine to suggest that finders of the book leave remarks about their day or the reason they picked the book up.
There are all kinds of classes you can take for an artists date. One I haven’t seen listed is an aerial arts class.
Magnetic poetry – We have several sets of magnetic poetry, but I hardly ever play with them. They aren’t on the fridge bc there’s just not room. I think buying a couple of interesting themed sets would spice it up and make it more fun to play with.
Build some funny weapons: spit ball launcher? marshmallow catapult? pvc potato gun? confetti cannon? water balloon slingshot? (just don’t take them somewhere they’re public and banned, and obviously don’t hurt anyone.)
Go read all the other great lists of Artist Date ideas. There are many!