13 Art Side Quests You Can Complete on a Weekend
Being an artist can sometimes feel like being on a never-ending productivity roller coaster. One minute you are making art, the next you are answering emails, checking sales, applying to an open call, updating your portfolio, replying to an art query, posting on Instagram, packaging an order, researching a residency, and somehow trying to convince yourself that you should also be creating more.
And then comes the weekend, and instead of actually resting, you find yourself thinking about everything you should be doing. Maybe it is time to give yourself a little side quest instead.
Not another goal. Not another thing to monetize. Not another “productive weekend routine.” Just something small, slightly random, creative, and fun enough to get you out of your usual headspace.
Think of these as tiny adventures for your creative brain. Most can be done in an afternoon, an evening, or somewhere across a lazy Saturday and Sunday. Pick one, disappear from your usual routine for a bit, and come back refreshed.
Here are 13 art side quests you can complete on a weekend.
1. Binge-Watch One Season of a Show
The important rule here is one season only. We are not starting a seven-season commitment when you promised yourself a relaxing weekend.
If you want something directly connected to art, The Andy Warhol Diaries is an easy pick. The Netflix limited series follows Warhol through his diaries, relationships, career and rise in the New York art world, with episodes touching on his work with artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat.
For something more visually indulgent, try RIPLEY, another limited series. Even if you forget the plot for a minute, the Italian locations, interiors, compositions and black-and-white cinematography are enough to keep an artist’s eyes very happy.
Or go for Halston, a limited series about the fashion designer whose name became synonymous with an era. It is a fun reminder that creative careers can involve vision, business, ego, collaboration and plenty of chaos.
The point is simple: watch something without analyzing it for work.
2. Read One Tiny Art Book
You know that enormous art history book sitting on your shelf that you have been “meaning to read” for approximately two years? Leave it there.
Instead, pick something you can actually finish.
A great weekend option is Linda Nochlin’s Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? The 50th anniversary edition is just 112 pages and remains an important text in feminist art history, questioning the institutional and cultural structures that shaped women’s opportunities in the art world.
You could also pick up an artist memoir, a collection of essays, or a book like Daily Rituals: How Artists Work and simply read a few entries at a time.
No highlighting every important sentence. No turning it into research. Just read.
3. Give Yourself a Museum Side Quest
Do not go to a museum with the pressure of “seeing everything.” Give yourself a ridiculous mission instead.
Find the strangest artwork. Find the one you would take home. Find the best color combination. Find the weirdest object. Find the painting you completely hate but cannot stop looking at.
Take notes on your phone if you want. Take a few pictures where permitted. Make your own little museum bingo card. Suddenly, you are not studying art. You are hunting for treasure.
4. Take Yourself For a Photowalk
Go outside with your phone or camera and give yourself one simple assignment:
Find 10 beautiful things. Not necessarily traditionally beautiful things.
It could be a peeling wall, someone’s front door, a shadow falling across a staircase, an interesting combination of colors at a market, an old sign, a tiny flower growing through concrete or the way sunlight hits your kitchen table.
You don’t need to turn the photographs into a series. You don’t even have to post them. The side quest is simply to spend an afternoon noticing things again.
5. Make a Collage From Things You Already Have
No shopping spree for supplies. Look around your house. Old magazines. Receipts. Newspaper. Packaging. Wrapping paper. Flyers. Scrap paper. Random bits of fabric. That drawer full of things you have been refusing to throw away for no identifiable reason.
Give yourself an hour and make something out of them. And please don’t worry about whether it looks “like your work.” That is exactly the point. Sometimes making something that has absolutely no place in your portfolio is incredibly freeing.
If you are into journaling or want to give it a try, read our article on 8 Journal Prompts to Help Artists Reflect, Reset and Reconnect.
6. Try a Medium You’re Terrible At
Painters, pick up clay. Photographers, try drawing. Illustrators, try embroidery. Ceramic artists, try watercolor. Digital artists, get your hands dirty with charcoal.
The goal is not to discover your next medium. The goal is actually to be bad at something again.
Artists spend so much time trying to improve, refine, develop a recognizable style and make better work that we forget how fun it is to make something without knowing what we are doing. Give yourself permission to be a beginner for an afternoon.
7. Make a One-Minute Experimental Film
You have a phone. That is enough. Pick something incredibly ordinary and make a one-minute film about it.
“Morning light.” “My studio when I am avoiding work.” “Things on my desk.” “Making coffee.” “My cat’s extremely important daily activities.”
Film tiny details. Try different angles. Add music. Edit it into one minute. Then stop.
You don’t need to become a filmmaker. You don’t need to upload it anywhere. You just spent a couple of hours looking at your everyday life through a completely different medium.
8. Take Yourself on a Craft Date
Find a weekend workshop and try something you’ve never done. Pottery. Printmaking. Life drawing. Jewelry. Tufting. Ceramics. Bookbinding. Anything that sounds mildly interesting.
Let someone else explain the process. Follow instructions. Make mistakes. Laugh at whatever comes out. Artists are so used to being the person making all the creative decisions. Sometimes it feels surprisingly nice to simply show up and let someone else tell you what to do for two hours.
9. Become a Tourist in Your Own City
Pick somewhere you have never properly explored.
A small museum. An old neighborhood. A historic building. A local market. A garden. An independent bookstore. A tiny gallery. Somewhere you have driven past a hundred times but never actually entered.
Give yourself four hours and pretend you are visiting your city for the first time. No productivity agenda. Just walk around, take pictures, eat something nice, notice the architecture and find one place you would actually come back to. You might be surprised by how much visual inspiration exists five minutes outside your usual routine.
10. Spend an Afternoon in a Library
Go to a library and find the art section. Then choose a book based purely on instinct. Maybe it has an incredible cover. Maybe you recognize the artist. Maybe the title makes you curious. Maybe you have absolutely no idea what it is about.
Sit down and flip through it. You don’t have to finish it. You don’t have to take notes. You don’t even have to borrow it. Just spend some quiet time surrounded by books, images and other people’s ideas. Sometimes your brain needs input that isn’t coming from a screen.
11. Recreate a Famous Artwork
This one is supposed to be silly. Choose a famous painting and recreate it using whatever you can find at home. Use your friends as models. Use your sibling. Use your pet. Use random household objects. Make costumes from bedsheets if you feel particularly committed to the bit.
And don’t try to make it impressive. The worse the recreation, the better. It is a tiny reminder that art can be playful, ridiculous and completely unnecessary.
12. Go on a Thrift Hunt for One Strange Object
Give yourself a tiny budget and visit a thrift store, flea market, secondhand shop or local market.
Your mission:
Find one object an artist would love. It could be an ugly vase. An old frame. A strange figurine. A vintage book. A piece of fabric. A broken clock. An old photograph. You don’t have to know what you are going to do with it. You just have to find it.
And if it ends up sitting on your studio shelf for the next five years because you became emotionally attached to a $3 ceramic duck, well, that is between you and the duck.
13. Have a Studio Picnic
This might be the easiest one of all. Put a blanket on the studio floor, balcony, garden or nearby park. Bring snacks. Make a drink. Put on your favorite playlist.
And then do not work. You can sketch if you genuinely want to. You can people-watch. You can read. You can talk to a friend. You can stare at the ceiling. But you are not allowed to turn it into a brainstorming session halfway through. Your studio does not always have to be where you produce something. Sometimes it can simply be a place where you exist.
Go Do Something Just for Fun
None of these 13 art side quests needs to take over your entire weekend. Most can be done in an afternoon, an evening or somewhere between Saturday morning and Sunday night.
And that is what makes them worth doing. You do not always need another plan for your career. You need a little room away from it.
Step off the constant roller coaster of making, selling, applying, emailing, posting and trying to keep up. Go somewhere new. Read something small. Make something silly. Watch a beautiful show. Photograph a strange wall. Try a medium you know nothing about. You might not come back with a finished artwork.
You might come back with something better: a fresher perspective, a quieter mind and the feeling that making things can actually be fun again.
Consider that your weekend side quest. No deadline. No submission fee. No algorithm required.
