Like I’ve mentioned before, as artists we’re always looking for ways to connect, improve, and challenge our creative practice. I’ve participated in my fair share of drawing challenges, so I believe I have enough experience to help other artists get the most out of them. With the approaching footsteps of art challenges this autumn ( hello, Smaugust and Inktober) I’ve been thinking a lot about art challenges lately. Namely, the one that I completed last year, Smaugust.

What is an Art or Drawing Challenge?

Art or drawing challenges provide artists and creative people opportunities in which to push their creative practice through repetition and consistency. Most challenges are the span of a month but I’ve seen some that are only a week, or can expand to a whole year. These art challenges are extremely popular on Instagram due to its visual format and use of hashtags. Anyone can create an art challenge or participate in one. These art challenges vary by subject, you can see in my previous post on drawing challenges. Many challenges are organized by a monthly theme, making it something fun to look forward to. This also enables an artist or creative to be able to plan for the challenge way in advance (a helpful tip I’ll also mention below).

Speaking of Art Challenges, Let’s Discuss Smaugust

Smaugust is a challenge in which you follow a prompt and draw dragons all during the month of August. The prompt list can be made up by yourself or can be found via hashtags on social media. I love dragons and my personal motto has always been, “When in doubt, draw dragons” so it made sense to me to try and complete an entire month of dragon drawings in August 2020. At the time I was just getting back into drawing again after neglecting my creative pursuits to care for my newborn and going back to my day-job. I learned a lot of the following tips by completing Smaugust last year.

Tips on How to Make the Most out of Drawing Challenges:

• RULE #1: Don’t overburden yourself

This is sooo important. It’s a leading factor to why any artist fails to complete their chosen challenge. Too many artists suffer burnout and fail to complete the challenge. Which can lead to hurting our self-confidence. I got really close in 2018 during October when I tried my hand at the Inktober challenge and still kick myself for not finishing out the last three days!

You don’t have to commit to a drawing every day, even if the challenge you chose has prompts for every day that month. You’re an artist, you learned the rules so you can break them, amirite? You can plan to complete a drawing every two days or one a week, etc. Whatever works for you and your daily schedule. Be realistic on what you can accomplish in a day, not everyone’s daily schedule is the same or even similar…But we all want to step out of our comfort-zones and challenge ourselves!

• Plan on using the sketches or drawings for something, a ‘bigger picture’ project if you will

1. Zines
2. Stickers
3. Prints
4. Exclusive downloads on your own personal art site
5. Images are ready for uploading to a POD( (print on demand) site

Look at it this way: you’re spending an entire month on a specific group of drawings. You may as well reuse them for other opportunities after sinking so much time, effort, and perhaps love, into them.

• Decide on one or all, or a couple of the points below

1. Theme or subject matter
2. Materials or tools to use (if you’re a fan of ink pens check out my 2 posts on my personal favorites)
3. Color scheme
4. Surface or sketchbook to work in
5. Time limit (ex: 30 minutes then whatever you have completed is what you have for that particular day)

Some of the points above are already predetermined if you try one of the monthly themes like Smaugust, Mermay, or Huevember, so that definitely helps.

• Schedule out your drawings a month in advance

Try to loosely sketch out your subjects so that you have a foundation on which you can add more detail later. This helps to avoid the ‘Blank Paper Syndrome’ where the stark, white paper hinders your creative flow. Especially helpful for busy students or parents who have limited time each day for their creative pursuits. This is something I will be doing in preparation for Inktober this year…I’m determined to complete the whole month!

In Conclusion

Art or drawing challenges are a fun way to explore new ideas, techniques, and to challenge yourself as an artist. Use the advice above to make your next (or very first) drawing challenge a success!

What about you? Is there anything that you’ve learned from participating in art challenges that I missed? Let me know in the comments below.

In case you missed them:

• My Favorite Art Drawing Challenges – an ever changing list of drawing challenges on social media
• A Weekend Adventure and Bird Sketches! – bruh, take a look at this deep fried grilled cheese