First – find a painting. There are some great online resources to pick your way through, e.g. art gallery website collections and video tours and Time Out and The Guardian have lists of virtual tours across the world – see below:
And – brilliant art galleries from around the country – these are the ones I know particularly – but there’ll be lots of others:
Artists for inspiration – I find I can get inspired by pretty much anything, once I really start looking, but a few suggestions are:
Look up movements, from pre-historic, to ancient, to medieval, to modern. Look for paintings with a narrative. Try:
Websites for inspiration
When you have captured a few paintings that intrigue you, here are a few approaches that people have found useful as triggers for writing:
And now?
Try writing an opening paragraph to a book describing the scene
Decide: is this a dramatic high point from which your story will goes back? How would you fill in the back story?
Or is it a story which will build slowly and chronologically?
Will it have one, two, or several points of view?
Try writing another paragraph – and another
And – GOOD LUCK! But be careful – ekphrastic writing is habit-forming – you may become addicted!
© Gill Harry 2020
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