Paint Your Own Picasso
Danger: Highly addictive activity that may impact productivity, but you should do it anyway.
Your 'Other' Profile Pic
Take a photograph that shows raw emotion, as expressed by the real you. Upload it here.
Emote-a-Sketch
Internet Explorer users, beware. For you, art and the web just don't go together. The latest example is this awesome sketching tool at Mr. Doob, with brush styles ranging from fur to spider web. Not to mention a simple export to PNG file format for sharin
Tales of Transition
Tell us about a moment of transition via the things you elected to bring with you, the things that you left behind, and the manner in which you pulled your life into a new focus and stepped forward.
All Drawn Out
“An attempt at visualizing the Fourth Dimension: Take a point, stretch it into a line, curl it into a circle, twist it into a sphere, and punch through the sphere.” —Albert Einstein
Graph your God (or lack thereof)
Consider your beliefs, disbeliefs, or jury-is-still-out stance on God. Sum it up Venn diagram-style. Take a photo. Show it off.
Interview the Other
Assignment time for all you would-be journalists and biographers and novelists and short story writers and essayists and yes, even you poets out there.
I See Dead People
Write about a dead body that impacted you. Animal, insect, or human. As long as it's a rotting corpse, we want to know about it in 250 wordsor less.
The Art of Tweeulogy
I met Keith the first day of freshman orientation at the University of North Texas back in 1994. We became great friends, took classes together, and hung out quite a lot. After graduating, we still kept in touch. Last week, when he didn’t answer his phone
Life's Lessons Learned, The Artistic Way
On his Web site, Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far, Stefan Sagmeister claims to have only learned 20 things in life so far. So he’s asking users to contribute their own life lessons—and do it artistically as well. Enter SoulPancake and you.
Faceless Self-Portrait
Photographer Mark Menjivar takes 'portraits'. Not of people, but of their refrigerators—nothing added, nothing taken away. As I looked through the snapshots, I felt a bit like a voyeur peeking into the private spaces of a complete stranger. And it got me
Less is More
Da Vinci said that simplicity is the “ultimate sophistication.” Walt Whitman believed that it is the “glory of expression.” One of the reasons I have a love affair with writing lists is because of the creative power it takes to condense a big idea to its
Make Your Mar(k)quee
We often ignore billboards and advertising. But a local church’s marquee message can move us or make us shake our fist in anger—or cause us to laugh uncontrollably, as this one did.
Art Within Arm's Reach
"Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes." --Kahlil Gibran
Street Art Scavenger Hunt
I have a theory: The reason so many artists love New York is because you can be taking a casual walk in Manhattan, turn a corner, and BOOM, you find sudden inspiration—in a building's architecture, a person's clothing, even a piece of street art.
Go Big or Go Home
If you had one last chance to do something good with what you have, what would it be? Would you empty your checking account, rent a helicopter, and throw the money out the side? Finally record that song you wrote 10 years ago and post it on YouTube? Serve
Pause that moment...
I wish life had a remote control. Fast-forward the crap; pause the really good stuff. That way, I could make the great moments in my life last forever—or at least 5 minutes longer. Like that night 8 years ago, when we sat on the park bench for two hours,
Scrap-paper prayer
“Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.” --Gandhi
Pray. In Seven Words.
Write a conversation (read: prayer) with God. Use only seven words.
Awkward Self-Portrait
Set up and take your own awkward self-portrait. Capture your life right now in all its awkward, uncomfortable glory.
Send a sign to God
Asking for a sign from God: Lame. Sending a sign TO God: Totally awesome. If you could send a sign to God letting him, her, it, know what’s on your mind, what would you say? Tweet it with the hashtag #signtogod and post it below so that God (and everyone
Playlist for People-Watching
“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.” —Plato
Express Excess
“Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.” —Voltaire
Spanglish. Brunch. Spork.
port·man·teau (n) - A word whose form and meaning are derived from a blending of two or more distinct words (i.e. smog = smoke + fog) There’s something beautiful about the blend. So let’s play the portmanteau game. Pick a subject and give us a portmantea
Digital Invisible Ink
I have writer's block. I need to write an intro for this post, and I don’t know where to start. I’ve written and deleted variations of the opener about nine times. Now I’m just typing out of necessity. If you’re like me and constantly kicked in the shins
