Ekphrasis is from Greek meaning the description of a work of art as a rhetorical device. That's actually pretty straight forward, but another way to look at it, is it's highfalutin fan fiction, usually about paintings or pieces of music, but it can be about virtually anything. Look at or listen to the following piece of art and write a piece of prose or poetry that is inspired by some aspect of it.
Today's artwork is...
a piece by Simon Stålenhag whose title I was unable to locate. He released a book that looks really cool, you can order it here, with shipping to the US it comes out to be I think around $55, but it really looks cool, 1980's Sweden populated by fantastical machines and creatures as well as normal people. Unfortunately the writing is in Swedish, but hey, the art's universal.
I love this Swedish artist's work, blending simple, almost nostalgic landscapes and people with sci-fi elements. It kind of makes me think of peasants living in the shadows of Roman aqueducts decades after the Romans had left. However, there are many different ways to interpret this picture. Maybe those kids are revolutionaries in a sort of Red Dawn-like setting, or maybe those kids aren't as young as they appear and are the sentry machine's operators, guarding the populace from monsters or aliens or something. Or the mech could be entirely metaphorical and it stands for a rite of childhood. Give it a go and once you start don't look back.
