I Wrote a Book. It Has 175 Art Prompts and Zero Excuses.
So this happened.
I wrote a book called Let’s Make Something: Art Prompts Inspired by Canada. It’s 94 pages of watercolour illustrations, cultural context, surprising facts, and prompts designed to get you making things. Not perfect things. Things.
Why?
The idea started the way most of my ideas start: I noticed something and couldn’t let it go. I kept thinking about the stuff that makes Canada feel like Canada. Not the tourism version. The real one. The hockey stick that’s more tape than stick. The mitten drawer where singles go to die. The prairie horizon that makes people from other places nervous. A Tim Hortons drive-through at 6:45 in the morning. An orange shirt and everything it carries.
I wanted to make art about all of it. Then I wanted other people to make art about it too.
What’s Inside
The book has 25 subjects organized into five sections: Shared Symbols, What We Wear, Our Land, Creatures of the Land, and Ordinary Canada. Each subject gets a context page with the story behind it, a main drawing prompt, three alternate approaches, a Did You Know fact, and three follow-up activities. That’s where the 175 prompts come from.
Not an Artist? Great. Keep Reading
You don’t need to be good at art to use this book. I say that on page 8 and I mean it. You need something to mark with and something to mark on. Pencil, paint, collage, the flyers you’ve been meaning to recycle. The prompts are open enough that your version will look nothing like anyone else’s, which is the whole point.
I illustrated it myself in watercolour. Every piece in the book is mine, which means some of them are great and some of them are the best I could do at the time. Both are fine.
The dedication reads: “For everyone who thinks they can’t draw. You’re probably right, but that’s not the point.”
I still believe that. I still can’t draw a maple leaf from memory. I wrote a whole book about Canadian art prompts and the leaf on my flag entry is a little wonky. It made it into the final version anyway.
Where to Find It
The book is available now on Amazon. If your local bookstore or library doesn’t carry it yet, ask them. It’s in the system through IngramSpark, which means they can order it. If you’ve ever wanted to make something and didn’t know where to start, this is your start.
Get something to mark with. Get something to mark on. Let’s make something.