Artists always need fresh painting ideas.
Creating the same still life with a lemon in a bowl gets boring; you need something new and challenging.
The struggle to decide what to paint is real.
Painting Ideas for Every Artist
Don’t worry; we won’t tell you to go outside and paint your flower bed or set up a vase of flowers. You could think of those on your own.
Instead, we’re providing you with the inspiration you need to discover what you love and motivating you to try something new.
Artists of any skill can find something new to create with these challenging painting ideas.
Atmosphere Before Subject
If you’re struggling to decide what to paint, try thinking backward.
Instead of focusing on the subject matter, focus on the feel and style you wish to achieve.
Start by deciding what color combinations you want to use, which will help you determine your atmosphere. Consider whether you want a playful, magical, dark, or serious tone.
Your tone and color scheme can help you determine your subject. The painting ideas will come to you as you form the piece.
Construction and Feel
Deciding how you want your painting to look and feel can help you figure out what to paint.
Consider the texture, brushstrokes, finish (matte or gloss?), and the backdrop. How do you want to layer the colors, and what do you want to pop?
Will you blend your subjects into the background or use hard edges and brighter tones to disconnect your subject from its surroundings?
If your construction plan doesn’t inspire you to choose a subject, paint the scene anyway. You might decide to add a subject later or realize that the construction and feel were all you needed for a masterpiece.
Have a Wild Brainstorming Session
The best painting ideas start with you.
Grab your art journal and pen, and start brainstorming. Write a list of 100 things you can paint right now.
Consider things available to you in your home or a short drive away. Think about pictures you could turn into paintings or imaginary scenes you’ve created in your head.
Something on your list should make you want to grab your brush and explore its beauty.
The Ugliest Things You Can Find
An artist’s job is to find the beauty in the mundane.
Challenge yourself even further by finding the beauty in something ugly.
Paint a pile of dirty dishes, a garbage heap, or a moldy fruit. Can you find and showcase the beauty in it? Any painting idea that creates such a bold challenge is worth pursuing.
Light and Shadow
What is sight but your eye’s ability to discern different wavelengths of light from the shadow?
Observe how the light enters the room, shines on particular objects, and how the shadows created dull others. Snap a few photos at sunrise to capture the stunning interplay on film so you can recreate it on canvas.
Focusing on the light and the shadows, regardless of subject, will help you become a better artist.
A Jumbled Mess
To enhance your skills as a painter, you should challenge yourself to paint a jumble of similar objects.
Consider a bowl of candy.
Beginners can gain focus on the simple shapes and edges, learning to see how each piece fits together to form a cohesive scene and defining the lines to keep it from jumbling together into an indiscernible mass.
As you gain more experience, you can experiment with making each piece look enticing and delicious to the inner child viewing the finished piece. Leave empty wrappers and half-eaten fragments in the scene to highlight the irresistible allure of the bowl.
Candy is an easy choice because it elicits an automatic nostalgia for the childhood delight you would have felt about seeing a big pile of candy when you were young. Because nostalgia is an emotion built around memories, a painting that centers on simple and classic lighting/setting will help push that emotion forward.
If you keep that emotional connection in your mind as you paint, the emotion will echo through your brushwork and color choices.
However, any pile of similar objects will help you gain skills as an artist. Consider the following painting ideas: coins, rocks, office supplies, or anything else that forces you to merge shapes into a cohesive whole.
Identical Objects
The fun thing about the jumbled mess is that each piece has a slightly different shape, size, and color. As an artist, you need to fit them together.
But it’s also fun to paint a group of identical objects, getting them to fit together and practicing to form the same shape repeatedly.
My personal favorite subject to paint is stacks of solid gold bars. But since those aren’t always readily available, I also use pencils, rolls of paper, pancakes, silverware, and anything else around the house that comes in identical sets.
Paint Your Favorite Toys
Painting your favorite toys offers two fantastic benefits. First, you get to re-examine your childhood favorites with a new eye, and second, you get to explore themes of nostalgia and childhood in your work.
Legos are perfect, because they offer so many options. You could build something with them to create a scene, but you don’t have to.
I have always liked separating Legos by their colors. What if you arrange those Legos in color-coded piles and shapes as if they’re arranging themselves?
Painting toys could almost have a deeper meaning, as if you, the artist, were trying to show how your childhood creativity blends effortlessly into your use of color as a painter. It’s a unifying technique that can make your subject more personalized.
Absence
An empty chair provides an almost abstract subject for a painting.
Vincent Van Gogh famously sent paintings of empty chairs to his brother by post. He wrote letters, too, but the painting subject itself speaks volumes.
The empty chair represents the absence of someone, either temporarily or permanently. It makes the viewer consider who’s supposed to fill the chair, feeling the loss along with the artist.
Look at the empty chairs in your home as if they represent someone’s absence. Stage a scene with that “absent presence” motif by adding props near the chair, like a table, lamp, or basket. Make the scene suggest someone specific by placing objects identifiable to them in the basket, on the table, or perhaps a “favorite” blanket draped over the chair. Add clothing and accessories they wore to the scene.
Tell a Story
“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”
-Edward Hopper
Craft a story with the things you have lying around the house. Use everyday objects to create an art project invoking an emotional reaction. If you lean into emotional storytelling, your work will project a response regardless of your technical skills.
In the end, art needs to have soul, not robot precision.
Here’s where you can get inventive. Arrange 50 traffic cones around your neighbor’s car to showcase their notoriously bad driving skills. Throw piles of clothes in the yard to represent those taken in the rapture.
Choose an object that, when scattered in a certain place, pattern, or direction, tells a story, like a trail of rose petals leading around a corner or into a room.
Express the emotions in your motif using your physical painting. If the gesture is angry, your brush strokes might be slashing and exaggerated, and your color choices are all blacks and blood reds. If the gesture is friendly, kind, or gentle, let your brushwork reflect a soft feather quality, where the forms almost blend together in harmony.
Embrace Art Challenge Communities
If, after all this inspiration, you’re still drawing a blank, consider joining one of the many community art challenges from around the web.
Community art challenges force you to consider painting ideas outside your normal subjects. They get you practicing and allow you to see the broad spectrum of skills and abilities on display. Not only will you see skilled masters showcasing their best work, but you’ll also see plenty of folks just starting who aren’t even at your skill level.
These challenges help you see how far you’ve already progressed. They help you realize that those masters were once where you are now, just as you were once where the beginner is now. All your practice has paid off and will pay off in spades as you continue to hone your craft.
Change Your Style
Sometimes, it’s not what we paint, but how we paint it. As a fun painting practice, try changing your style.
If you love impressionism, lean more towards realism. If you’re a realist, try painting an abstract piece.
Mix up your brushstrokes and blending techniques. Change your color schemes. Try a different medium. Use a palette knife instead of a brush.
Practicing in a different style will force you out of your comfort zone, enhancing your skills in the process. Who knows, you may even want to adapt a new technique to your standard way of doing things.
What To Paint
I hope some of these painting ideas triggered a different thought process for you when choosing your next painting subject.
The beauty is you can find inspiration in nearly anything to create an extraordinary work of art.
Grab your brush and start exploring the secret charm of the world around you.