Being clueless in a creative state could really be exhausting for artists. Most times we suddenly get detached from the flow of ideas due to the pressure. Even when making art is believed to be the easiest way to express yourself, it could be discouraging and demotivating sometimes. What do you do when you get to a point of struggle and have to repeatedly redo and undo a section of your artwork? You need fun activities or art challenges to kick-start your creative genius. Shall we?
ArtVsArtist
Social media today creates several platforms for artists to reconnect and draw inspiration from networking with like minds. The ArtVsArtist art challenge is a collage compound that comprises eight artworks and one image. You could challenge yourself daily, weekly, or whenever with your artwork uploaded on social media.
With platforms like Instagram, DeviantArt, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, you could unveil your artwork to followers showing them the extent of your creativity. The history of this artwork challenge dates back to decades ago with numerous artists getting noticed for the incredible work they do.
Toone Art Challenge
Another art challenge you could jump on for fun is ToonMe which expects each artist to create a unique autoportrait of any object using cartoon style. In most cases, the object to be cartooned is a portrait of an actual photo. This helps your followers get an immediate preview of the actual photo and see what you made out of it.
Created by René Córdova, the ToonMe art challenge received a global acceptance amongst cartoonists and artists of all kinds. The half cartoon illustration and the half photo could help you gain tons of followers while creating a ToonMe artwork collection. There’s also a market of autoportrait cartooning out there that allows you to earn while having fun.
Different Art Style Challenge
The innovative and super creative #stylechallenge started with a viral Instagram post of the Instagrammer #beautifulnees87. The 17-year-old artist’s challenge idea was quite basic and easy for anyone with a drawing pad to jump on. All you have to do is create multiple sketches or drawings of a cartoon character posing as different styles as possible.
The #stylechallenge is an amazing art challenge that’d help you filter out art blocks. The idea of you having to work with a cartoon character but tweak its style multiple times just keeps the creativity juice going. Practicing this art challenge could help you figure out several ways to approach executing an idea during an art block.
#100headschallenge
Every artist should love drawing the human head, or pretty much the head of any character. It’s believed that it is the one part that truly defines the image you expect from the viewers. Well, unlike the option of being mediocre with your artwork, the #100headschallenge goes hardcore on the numbers to be drawn. Each participant is expected to draw 100 heads before considered fit for the hashtag.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a challenge without a timeframe or deadline. Because then you’d probably love to draw yours in the space of a year. Well, for serious challengers, it is expected that all sketches are turned in within a 10-day timeframe. Ideally, this would mean sketching ten heads daily to be able to meet the submission limit.
Inktober
If you’re a part of one of the Facebook drawing groups as well as the Instagram page of your favorite artists, you should be familiar with the hashtag #inktober. The hashtag is surrounded by ranging unusual topics that allow artists to paint or draw with a common derivative. Coined from the words “Ink” and “October“, the art challenge features creative minds across the globe.
Since the creation of its website (www.inktober.com) by Jake Parker, every month of October comes a list of topics attributed to each day for art. As an artist, Inktober would groom and shape you with positive habits that’d help improve your ability to focus on a subject matter per time.
Sketch Dailies
To truly express your creativity to the fullest, you have let it flow without putting pressure on yourself. This is majorly why some artists believe art challenges aren’t necessarily the best practices for this job. However, Sketch Dailies teaches you to tap into your creative world even when it doesn’t feel like it. It is a daily art challenge that requires artists to sketch an artwork every day.
Sketch Dialies doesn’t inflict pressure on your flow of creativity. Instead, it helps you develop the character and mindset of being a consistent artist. Since it’s daily, it doesn’t restrict you to a topic or mood. You could easily just paint how you feel daily for a month and still be on the challenge.
A Year Of Creative Habits
This challenge started with the daily habit of the phenomenon artist, Crystal Moody. At the time her story became public knowledge, Crystal had created arts consistently for three years. Her story on each piece motivated artists across the globe in understanding the power of creativity. Yes, as an artist, you’d have to master the habit of creativity. It’s a mystery that only a few understand.
Crystal Moody created a Facebook page to help the art community stay committed to the daily challenge of nurturing creative habits. The page also allows participants to share daily pieces to help others get inspired by their works.
The Sketchbook Project
Do love to have a sketchbook dedicated to a storyline or fictional event you’ve created in your mind? The Sketchbook art challenge is what you should devote your leisure hours to instantly. Unlike an individual who is contended with creating a piece, some of us love continuity.
This print swap art challenge allows you to keep your creative mind active all through the year. With each day unraveling an aspect of your character you find fascinating. The Sketchbook challenge helps artists like you create a storyline for possible animation or comic series.
DailyPaintWorks.com
In this profession, we mostly have to wait for art exhibitions or auctions to exchange our creativity for cash. The DailyPaintWorks.com. art challenge is a great motivation for artists to create artworks frequently. Unlike other challenges, this gets a lot of attention because of the monetary reward attached to the artworks.
For your time, creativity, and commitment, you could get art collectors to purchase your artwork for an attractive price. As the competition on the website increases daily, posting your paintings as frequently as possible doubles your chances to make sales.
The Left Hand
There’s never been a more straightforward art challenge with precise rules for its challenges than this. The Left-Hand challenge showcases the artwork of individuals who make drawings and paintings with their non-dominant hand. Pretty straightforward right? This means if you are a right-handed paint artist, you’d have to make the painting with your left hand.
For transparency’s sake and a chance to remain sane when drawing, challengers can draw with their dominant hands first. After which you can use the image as a prototype for the Left-hand challenge itself. This challenge would help you develop your knowledge of proportions and fine-tune your imagination.
Draw This Again
This is one of the most effective art challenges common among professionals. It’s the perfect way to keep track of your improvement and review areas that need practice. The Draw This Again challenge allows you to select an old art of your choice and recreate them. It’s more like the ‘Before and After’ collage of trendy social media images.
What this challenge helps you discover is how much you’ve improved on the skills you once struggled with. Most times, challengers get motivated after redrawing their artwork and see the obvious progress themselves.
Character Design Challenge
Character Design Challenge is the name of a popular Facebook community created for the sole purpose of designing characters. For every month, challengers are presented with new themes to help them centralize their character design. After which a 30-day timeframe is required for the artwork to be completed and uploaded on the Facebook group. The best designs based on the theme wins.
This art challenge is endorsers by Character Design References (CDR) to help develop the skills of 2D artists. Character Design Challenge accepts participants that create both digital and traditional 2D artworks.
Face Your Art
The challenge is common among artists because it helps them make a collage of their artworks for the world to see. Every challenger is allowed to compile a maximum of 9 pieces of their artworks for the challenge. Mostly, these artworks cropped faces of every drawing or painting attached to the collage.
Alongside this collage, the challenge warrants that you also attach a description of the overall artwork. Created by the artist called Chao to help art professionals with describing their work so it’s understandable to the public.
20 Art Styles Challenge
Similar to the Different Art Challenge, this requires artists to draw or paint 20 different styles of themselves or a character. The challenge would help you learn to think outside the box as an artist. What happens when you’ve exhausted your ideas and have to come up with something entirely off-script? Such exercises as this would help master the skill with ease.
This challenge trends on Instagram and other social media platforms using the hashtag #20styles or #20style challenge. As a participant, you get to choose what object you’d be making your artwork with, either your portrait or any character.
Smaugust (Dragon Drawing Challenge)
Popularised by the female artist with the nickname “Kamakru” is Smaugust an art challenge that’s anticipated every August. The goal of Kamakru when she publicized the idea was to have a design, drawing, or painting of a dragon created daily through August. For days when the inspirations aren’t forthcoming, there’s a list of ideas to help you stay in the game.
To get started on this one, you should take your time to preview years of designs, drawings, and paintings already displayed on the platform. Smaugust would help you understand the connection between animal art and its surroundings.
The Six Fanarts
Sometime in March 2020, Melissa Capriglione started the Six Fanarts with a viral Twitter post calling out users to suggest six popular media to creates. Following this tweet was a massive engagement of art lovers and people who generally appreciated the drawings of their loved ones. Just like every other artist following the trend, you can join the exercise using #6fanarts and #sixfanartschallenge.
Melissa ensured everyone has the freedom of drawing whatever they love without topic restrictions or lists. This challenge would help you better your skills in recreating pieces of popular media characters.
Sailor Moon Redraw
As Sailor Moon is a popular figure in the world of animation, this challenge is centered around the creation of its character. What’s required of you is to redraw “Usagi” in whatever style, surrounding, or scene of your choice. The Sailor Moon challenge doesn’t restrict challengers to the use of tools or types of arts.
You can decide to go completely traditional with your drawings or use digital artworks to participate. You could also choose to make a combination of the Usagi character with other anime characters of your choice. Truly, there’s no limit or restrictions on the Sailor Moon redraw.
The Magical March
This challenge is centered around the drawing of a magical girl (or pretty much anything around this subject) daily throughout March. Unlike most challenges we’ve discussed so far, this allows artists to pick out their prompt lists which makes it flexible. You can join the challengers today by using the following hashtags; #MagicalMarch #MagicalGirl.
In 2018, Mariana Real made the magical March hashtag trend for the first time with several participants and comments on the artworks. Meanwhile, Ruby’s 30-day Magical Girl challenge was the first version of #MagicalMarch.
Draw This In Your Style (DTIYS)
DTIYS is a challenge that enables participants to draw an existing art piece in their style. This would help you improve your ability to recreate a portrait request while adding your style. However, the rules with this exercise are quite strict. Firstly, they expect that the challengers make use of a certain color palette. Secondly, there’s a limited timeframe to every task, no tracing, and entry limit.
MerMay Challenge
Would you love to have fun while brushing up your drawing skills? Then this is an art challenge you should jump on now! MerMay’s goal is to ensure participants draw a mermaid art daily all through May. Do you get where the term “MerMay” comes from now? To join this trend, get the prompt list for each day on MerMay.com.
The prompt lists on the website are not mandatory just as there are no restrictions on how creative your drawing should turn out. The hashtag #MerMay is usually one of the top trending hashtags in March on Instagram.
Conclusion
These art challenges are here to help you brush up your skills and market your artwork to a wide range of art lovers. Aside from the fact that you get a platform to showcase your works, the majority of them also make you better. Start an art challenge today! You’d be glad you did!
