Creative Explorations Vol #19: SOUND

A sketchbook/art journal prompt inspired by Jason Momoa 🔥

Before we begin, a new year wish for you:

May we experience a year of softness, tenderness, and fierce kindness.

May our days be filled with creativity and may we be aware of the ordinary beauty that is all around us.

May our joys be plenty, our sorrows few. May love and peace wind their way around our hearts.

Happy 2025, lovelies! xx

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This month’s prompt is inspired by Jason Momoa.

{I never thought an actor could inspire an art prompt, but here we are! Where are my Jason Momoa fans at?}

The husband recently stumbled upon an AppleTV series he stars in, called SEE. Far in a dystopian future, the human race has lost the sense of sight, and society has had to find new ways to interact, build, hunt, and to survive. Some people have a heightened sense of smell, others a heightened sense of sound, and some are presages, which means they can sense feelings, or somehow seem to know the immediate future.

One of the important senses in this world is SOUND, with characters using ropes and bells, sticks and clan-specific words to navigate their village and locate one another. And that is our prompt for this month.

Resources + ideas

Musical lines: All you need for this exercise is a few sheets of drawing or copy paper, some color pencils, crayons, or markers. Once you have your supplies, put on some music, and let your pencils dance across the page. You can close your eyes and use both your hands to make it even more fun! Not only is this a great warm-up to help loosen up before a painting session, you can use these pages as collage paper or take it a step further by seeing if you can find an image within those lines.

Tip: If you have the space for it, try taping a few sheets of A4 size paper together so you have a larger surface to work on.

Mark making: Using a similar process as the one for musical lines, pick a piece of music and use it to make marks. Listen to the beat, the rhythm, and let your pens/markers/color pencils respond to it. Do you want to make random lines? Wavy lines? Circles? Squiggles? Here’s a short workshop by artist Andy Harper demonstrating the process.

Tip: This is a great way to create abstract paintings!

This is an exercise that kids can do too! Some of their paintings remind me of abstracts by famous artists.

Draw sounds: Onomatopoeia, using words to describe sounds, is commonly used in comics, with word balloons such as Biff! Bam! Pow! Try creating a 3D Pop Art collage, or draw and paint some onomatopoeia words inspired by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Sheet music: Incorporate some sheet into your art, but instead of using it in the background, experiment with ways to make it the focal point in your piece of art.

Get lyrical: Use your favorite songs to create visual art. You could use the lyrics of the songs to inspire a theme for your painting; think of the imagery that comes up for you while you listen to the song, and see how you can translate it into your art journal; or paint in time to the music and include your favorite lines from the song into the artwork while you paint, or as a sentiment over the top on your finished painting.

Altered CDs: If you have some old music CDs lying around that you no longer use, why not turn them into art? You can alter your old CDs using alcohol inks, or better yet, by collaging and stamping — and perhaps even adding textural elements — to your CDs.

Sound frequency paintings: You probably cannot do this at home, but it is a fascinating watch! Art by Swarez used a series of low frequency sound waves in an attempt to manipulate paint via two subwoofer speakers. You can watch the results of the experiment here — it’s a long video but you can use the timestamps to jump around to the portions you want to watch.

Turning music into paintings: Synesthetic artist Christina Eve sees sounds as color, and turns music into paintings! Read a bit about her process, watch her painting process, and see some of her art. And if you’re curious about synesthesia in art, you can read more about it here.

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.