As an artist we’re always looking for ways to connect, improve, and challenge ourselves in our creative practice. The arrival of social media and subsequent art challenges has fulfilled this opportunity for many of us. Over the following weeks I’ll be doing a two-part series on art drawing challenges to help fellow artists who are looking for a challenge!

In the first part of this series I’ll provide just a fraction of an ever-growing list of art drawing challenges. Many drawing challenges in this list I’ve seen around for a couple of years now (like Inktober and Mermay). Others are fairly new and aren’t as well known. A lot of art challenges start out with a small group of artists initiating the challenge and then making it shareable to a wider audience.

Many of the challenges listed below require the participant to draw, but any other medium could be used. It just depends on the stipulations of that challenge. The ones below are mainly for drawing, though, since that’s more my forte than sculpting or painting.

I’ve listed challenges that are held a specific month as well as others that can be done at any time of the year. A couple I have tried and others I have wanted to dabble in but haven’t had enough free time to participate. This post will be updated frequently as I stumble upon more interesting drawing challenges, so be sure to bookmark this page!

January:

• Creatuanary – mythical creatures, creatures from games…

February:

• Fairyary – fairy (or fae if you will)
• Febirdary – birds!

March:

• MarchOfRobots – robots

April:

• None, sadly

May:

• Mermay – mermaids
• MythicalDogsWeek – dogs from various world mythologies
  • This one was fun, I believe this was the 1st year for it.

June:

• Junicorn – unicorns
• KaiJune – Kaiju
• JuneBug – bugs (insects, I’m sorry)
• JuneFae – faeries
• JuneFoxADay – foxes

July:

• Zooly – they have a Facebook page with the prompt list
• KaiJuly – Kaiju, but done during July
• Julycanthropy – lycans, or werewolves

August:

• Smaugust – dragons
  • Last year I completed the entire month of this challenge.
• Doggust – dogs!

September:

• Sketchtember – some artists use this challenge as an opportunity to fill and entire sketchbook in a single month

October:

• Inktober ( I GOT TO DAY 29 I’M SO LAME)
• Drawloween – fall or Halloween-themed drawing prompts
• Drawtober – Halloween-themed prompts
• Goretober – horror and gore themed
• Catober – cats!

November:

• Huevember – limited color palettes
• Not gonna lie, thinking about starting a Birbvember challenge, even if it’s only for myself

December:

• Drawcember – wintery-themed drawing prompts
• Decembird – birds
• Dinovember – dinosaurs

Non-monthly related Challenges:

• The.Petite.Planner shares monthly drawing challenges, some go by items generally associated with that month (October – pumpkins) and others are associated with a color. I think they’re aimed toward bullet planning folks but they’d work well for creating artwork, too
• Inktober52 – one prompt a week, every week, all year long
• Kick in the Creatives – wonderful little community that shares different prompts every month

That’s all for now! Next week I’ll be sharing some knowledge-nuggets I’ve learned the difficult way regarding drawing challenges. As mentioned above, be sure to bookmark this page! I’ll be updating this post periodically when I find some interesting art challenges to include, so stay tuned!

Here’s Part 2 of Making the Most out of Art Challenges!

Are there any art challenges that you know of that I should add to the list?