Creative explorations Vol #14: Moody
A sketchbook/art journal prompt to support your art practice.
Creative Explorations are themed around a prompt that you can explore in your own art/creative practice over the coming weeks. Prompts will be sent out on the first Friday of every month. I hope this month’s prompt sparks your creativity!
The skies outside my window are an angry gray, smothering the bright morning sun. The light turns brooding, the skies ominous. There’s a heaviness to the air around me, the sharp smell of ozone. And then I hear it — the deep rumble of thunder, the sound burrowing into my bones. And then I see it — the flash of lightening illuminating the sky for a second, before the first fat drops of rain start falling from the pregnant clouds. Soon, the world outside my window appears hazy and glazed, as sheets of rain turn the roads into rivers of mud, broken branches and fallen leaves spinning crazily as they are carried away by the fierceness of the storm.
This month’s prompt is a reflection of the weather outside my window — dark and moody. If you are graced with clear skies and a bright sun, or are enjoying the winter months in the Southern Hemisphere, there’s still a mood to the environment around you. So this month, let’s see how we can explore MOODY in our sketchbooks.
Resources + ideas
Paint the sky: Let the sky be your muse! Sunrise and sunset are the best times to see some dramatic skies. Observe the colors in the sky, the way they blend and shift as the sun begins its slow descent, or ascent. Use that as inspiration for your next painting. Be as literal or abstract as you’d like.
Desaturate: Another way to create a sense of mood in your paintings is through a simple, limited color palette with desaturated colors. To desaturate your main paint color, mix it up with a small amount of the complementary color. You can add a tiny amount of white to recover the lost brightness, if you wish.
A color for your mood: Another interesting exercise could be to create some mood wheels. The idea is somewhat similar to a color wheel, except that you will lay down a color that corresponds to different emotions in each section of the wheel. See Plutchik’s wheel of emotions for inspiration.
50 shades of gray: {Sorry, I couldn’t resist! :-D} Try using gray as your primary color on a small study. To bring more variety to your painting, try mixing up different shades of gray. The easiest way to do make some beautiful grays is to mix the three primary colors, red, yellow and blue. Or you could use a pair of complementary colors, such as blue and orange, red and green, or yellow and purple to mix up some gray. Here’s a quick little tutorial.
Veiled and hidden: Stormy skies veil the brightness of the sun, and foggy landscapes appear somewhat hazy and soft-edged. Mimic this in your art journal by using translucent layers like vellum, gauze, or muslin to obscure a portion of your focal image.
Moody and atmospheric: Take a look at the portfolios of a few photographers who capture a sense of mood and drama for some inspiration. Some ideas:
Try your hand at photo editing using Lightroom presets or various phone apps to create a moody landscape or portrait.
Use one of the images as a visual prompt for some writing.
Observe the photographer’s use of color and lighting and create some color palettes to experiment with in your art journal.
Use one of the photographs as a reference image for your next art journal spread.
Some photography portfolios for you to explore:
I look forward to seeing your take on this prompt! You can email your finished pieces to me on shinjinim@substack.com or share them on Notes if you use the Substack app. If you share on Instagram, tag me @moderngypsy.in
Like this prompt? Share it with your friends and invite them into our virtual studio. If you’re on the Substack app, you can tap on the like button or restack to Notes to let me know you enjoyed this post.
Nice suggestions