Ideas & Themes in Art

https://theartyteacher.com/artists-themes/ 

Great list of idea starters, themes and examples
Themes in Art from the Museum of Modern Art (great site!)
CREATURES

Chicken adventurer
A demon attempting to do good
Half-deer creature resting under a tree
Serpent-like red dragon
A ghost holding a lantern, eyes emotionless, mouth open


Trolls playing golf’
Zombie soccer player
Half human, half octopus
Multi-limbed monster chef preparing many meals at once
Faceless figure with anatomically weird body


A winged lion getting ready to pounce on its prey
An aquatic dragon with fish-like features
Sea dragon
The happy dog stuck its head out of the car window
An Orc chieftain points to a spot on the map, decided on his plan of attack


Ancient beings in their ancient dwelling places
A crouched gargoyle in the shape of a small impish being
The pet your parents wouldn't let you keep
The monster under the bed
Legendary dragon roaring and breathing a blistering fire


“…and they lived happily ever after”
Advanced genetic engineering gone wrong
An owl-bear hybrid
Pig Dragon

A sleek futuristic humanoid robot


SITUATIONS


He curled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. It was too cold to wake up just yet.

In the darkness and the silence, she was more alone than she had ever yet been.

His ghostly shape can still be seen on moonless nights

A delivery of anonymous flowers

Drinking coffee under warm blankets

"Heed this warning" the man begged

Receiving an unexpected gift

The young man paced nervously. His first duel was about to begin.

A kiss goodbye

Facing his ultimate fear
She heard the sound of hoofbeats rushing down the road and ducked behind a bush before they came into view.

Coming home to the smell of the most delectable meal

"This is going to be harder than I thought…."
A dragon saving a princess

The air crackles with magic
Running to catch the bus

"Well, accidents happen.”


ENVIRONMENTS


A house made of cake and candies

A city inside a long-dead creature's skeleton

A hidden dark part of an old library is illuminated by the warm glow of magic

Sunlight streaming through the treetops

Dragon's Lair

Red eyes reflected in the darkness beyond the safety of the fire
A place of peace

A messy Wizard's workspace

A warm, cozy coffee shop

Brightly-colored neon light from the street front stores reflect off of the wet pavement

A castle built into the side of a mountain
Park bench during a snowy winter evening

A huge market selling strange things from strange people
A fantasy treehouse

A futuristic mechanical war machine

Combinations and Alliances
  • ​You and the one thing that defines you;
  • Twins;
  • Siblings;
  • Mismatched couples;
  • Unfortunate combinations: drugs and celebrities; childbirth and pain; cats and water; sugar and tooth decay;
  • Discipline and being cruel to be kind;
  • Combinations of exercises / sets / routines;
  • Mixing of light (light streaming through coloured glass windows etc);
  • Lock combinations;
  • Combinations of numbers – gambling, addiction;
  • An uneasy alliance: a dog about to break its chain;
  • Things that depend on each other for survival: a plant growing in dirt trapped in a hole in the rocks; tiny creatures that live in on the fur / skin of others – ticks on cows / hair lice / germs;
  • Vaccinations and the alliance of ‘good’ germs fighting against bad…
  • Eco-systems – the interconnection of water / life etc;
  • A trusted alliance: horse and rider; blind person and guide dog;
  • Business networks that rely on one another;
  • Uniting against a common enemy.
  • A young child holding the hand of their mother;
  • Bad influences (combinations of friends) and peer pressure;
  • A family unit, in alliance against the world;
  • The butterfly effect (how a combination of actions / behaviours leads from one thing to another until every tiny moment in a life is interwoven with all the moments that came before);
  • Political alliances;
  • How ‘good’ people can complete horrific acts when lead on by the wrong situation and the wrong company;
  • Still life combinations: salt and pepper, sweet and sour, fish & chips, apple and cinnamon; peanut butter and jam; the literal combination of ingredients used to make a meal;
  • Unpleasant combinations we would rather not be reminded of: chocolate and obesity; that cute lamb and the juicy steak;
  • The legal binding (combination) of lovers: marriage / civil unions;
  • Combination of genes: Darwin’s theory of evolution – how traits are passed on etc;
  • A study of two people (or animals), or people who care about each other;
  • A person and something that they use to embellish their identity (i.e. fast car, makeup, fashion accessories, label clothing, iPhones);
Encounters, Experiences and Meetings
  • The meeting between mother and child / adoption / birth;
  • The clashing of those who despise each other;
  • Friends in a bustling and crowded restaurant;
  • The shields we put up in our brains: the filter between ourselves and those we meet;
  • The joining (or meeting) of two halves;
  • Meetings between strangers…The million people we pass on a daily basis, but never connect with;
  • Drunken encounters;
  • Encounters with god;
  • Online encounters and the changing social landscape of the world;
  • The clashing of cultures;
  • Meeting someone who has suffered a great loss;
  • Shameful encounters / those you regret;
  • A meeting room, filled with business people who go about their daily lives in a trance;
  • A boisterous meeting between children;
  • A birthday party;
  • Meeting at a skateboard park;
  • Reunion at an airport;
  • Meeting for the last time;
  • A life-changing moment;​
  • Focus on the senses (an event experienced through sight / audio etc);
  • Something that made you cry;
  • A deja vu experience;
  • Remembering an experience a long time ago: the passing of time / generations;
  • The meeting of truth and lies;
  • The meeting of fiction and reality;
  • Encountering animals: the interaction between human and animal kind and our influence upon them (for good or bad);
  • Meeting your childhood self or yourself fifty years in the future;
  • The meeting of land and sea;
  • Physical meetings between two things: the boundaries and edges, perhaps at a cellular level (plunging into / stabbing / tearing apart);
  • The meeting of theory and practicality;
  • How our own biases, backgrounds and modify/influence every experience we have: the influence of the mind;
  • Truly seeing yourself as you really are;
  • Conception;
  • The aftermath of a meeting that never happened;
  • Meeting temptation: the battle of wills;
  • The meeting of technology and nature;
  • Ancient man meeting the modern world: the conflict between genes and the modern environment;
Facades
  • Deceptive facades, and the walls we put up to hide our true emotions;
  • Decaying wall surfaces / peeling away;
  • Reflective windows, mirroring a busy street or some other interesting scene (fragmented reflections);
  • A decorative facade – old church walls etc;
  • Old fashioned shop fronts / signage;
  • Secrets hidden behind facades / the things nobody talks about;
  • Sunshades / light streaming through facades / window openings;
  • Masks / dress-ups;
  • Abstraction of a building facade
Harmony, Discord
  • Love and hate relationships / fighting between families and loved ones;
  • The human mind, swinging from joy to misery and despair / schizophrenia / the meddling mind: our own worst enemy;
  • A whole lot of similar things, with one different thing that clashes with the rest;
  • Disturbing of the peace: a beautiful scene which is rudely interrupted (i.e. a hunter firing a bullet into a grazing herd of animals or someone pulling out a gun in a crowded shopping mall);
  • Musical interpretations: jazz bands / instruments / broken instruments;
  • Money: the root of good and evil;
  • The broken family / divorce / merged families;
  • The clashing of humans with the environment;
  • Something beautiful and ugly;
  • Meditation to escape the discord of modern day life;
  • Prescribed medication (happy pills) to minimise the discord in life – but eliminates the harmony?
  • A visual battle: a mess of clashing colours;
  • Things in the wrong environment: placing objects unexpectedly in different locations to create discord (or at least alertness and aliveness) a scene of apparent harmony.


Icons
  • Symbols in airports with crowds of people of multiple ethnicities (i.e. icons communicating without language);
  • An absurd aspect of a pop star’s life;
  • The worship of a pop star by an ordinary teen (posters peeling off a crowded bedroom wall etc);
  • Religious icons – relevance in a modern world;
  • Someone using icons to communicate;
  • The lie of the icon: a pop star with a public image that is nothing like they really are;
  • Sex symbols: the disparity between ‘real’ bodies and those portrayed in magazines…


Inside, Outside
Sectional views through a landscape (i.e. showing a slice through the ground / inside the earth): mines / slips / erosion / quarries, with trucks and machinery taking soil and rocks away;
  • The soul: inside / outside – leaving the body;
  • Plays upon storage and scale, i.e. miniature ‘scaled down’ items inside other items, like large wild animals stored inside tiny jars;
  • Castings of the insides of objects – things you don’t normally think about – that are then exposed for all to see;
  • Walls / divisions / outsiders;
  • Deterioration that has occurred to something as a result of being left outside (i.e. an ice sculpture that is left in the sun or a decayed, rusted, weathered structure showing the long term effects of the elements);
  • Light streaming in a window from outside;
  • Kids in a daycare facility looking longingly outside;
  • Animals in a small enclosure: a sorry life in comparison to those wild and free outside;
  • Looking outside from an unusual perspective, i.e. as if you are a mouse looking through a small crack into a room;
  • Inside a bomb shelter;
  • Inside is meant to equal haven / shelter: what if inside is not this at all: a crime scene / an inside that has been violated;
  • In the palm of your hand;
  • The contents of something spilling out;
  • Shellfish or snails inside their shells.
  • The human ‘outside’ – an exterior presented to those around us. The fixation we have on creating the best exterior possible: weight control/dieting; makeup; cosmetic surgery; latest fashions;
  • Inside the earth: minerals / geology / the underworld;
  • Framing / windows;
  • Blurring of the boundary between inside and out;
  • Prisons / loss of freedom;
  • Breaking in the exterior barrier of things i.e. injuries in flesh resulting in the spilling out of insides;
  • Autopsy;
  • Opening a can of preserved fruit;
  • Pregnancy /birth;
  • Shelter from the rain;
  • The inconsistency between what is going on in the outside world and the inner turmoil of someone’s brain;
  • The change in state as something moves from outside to inside the human body (i.e. food > energy);
  • An environment that is devoid of ‘outside’ i.e. fluorescent lights / poor ventilation…lacking in plant life…unable to see nature outdoors…the dwindling human condition etc;
  • Apocalyptic future: what will happen if humans destroy the outdoor conditions; or a wall is erected to keep an infected virus-ridden population ‘outside’;
  • The peeling back of interesting things to expose what is underneath (inside)…i.e. banana skins, seedpods, envelopes.
  • Vegetables or interesting fruit sliced through to expose the insides (things with lots of seed / pips / bumpy skin etc);
  • Something opening to reveal something unexpected (i.e. inside a cardboard box);
  • The Impossible Staircase: indoors blending into outdoors in an indeterminable fashion / a blurring of dimensions;
  • Inside the human body: complex, organic form: the miracle of life (human anatomy drawings / x-rays;
  • Inside an animal carcass;
  • ​
Journey
  • ​A miniature journey  (i.e. walking down your garden path – with viewpoint at your feet etc; brushing your teeth in the morning – the journey from arrival at the sink to bright white smile);
  • Achieving a goal;
  • An academic journey – through school etc (ambition / academic goals / failure / success / test papers / assignments / grades etc…as in the hurdles you need to get to university);
  • On a bus or a plane or a train;
  • Memorabilia related to a particular journey (i.e. an overseas trip);
  • A still life made from tickets, maps, timetables;
  • The journey of an animal (i.e. a bird or fish, swimming upstream);
  • The journey of an insect walking a short distance over interesting surfaces;
  • Terrorism and the journey you will never forget.
  • A physical journey from a particular destination to another (i.e. the mundane drive between your home and school…seeing beauty in the ordinary etc; your first visit to see something that moved you);
  • The transformational journey from old to new (old structure demolished for something new / old technology making way for new etc);
  • A journey through time, such as a person aging / physical changes, or a record of memorable occasions in a life;
  • Childhood to adulthood;
  • Getting through an emotional circumstance, such as a loved one passing away or overcoming illness;
  • Conception/pregnancy/birth;
Rites of Passage
http://remezcla.com/lists/culture/photos-quinces-in-colombia-delphine-blast/
Society Today
  • Modern diet / processed food;
  • Digital technology and the impact it has on our lives;
  • Soaring depression levels / the psychiatric torment of modern man;
  • Soaring caesarean rates;
  • Drugs and mind-numbing forms of escape;
  • Slowing down;
  • More, more, more: ever increasing consumption;
  • The mechanised processes involved in the production of meat: pigs in tiny cages / battery hens / images from an abattoir;
  • Disconnection from the whole: i.e. a factory worker who spends his/her whole life assembling one tiny part of a product, without having any input into the big picture: disillusionment with life purpose.
​http://www.studentartguide.com/articles/a-level-art-exam-paper