{"id":2155,"date":"2024-10-01T07:48:05","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T14:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2024-10-01T07:48:05","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T14:48:05","slug":"monthly-drawing-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/01\/monthly-drawing-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Monthly Drawing Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It started with Inktober of 2016.
Inktober is an annual drawing challenge where artists create one piece every day for the month of October using the medium of ink. It sounds like a great concept to not only push you to draw something every day, but it can also challenge you to use a medium that you may not be all that familiar with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Inktober was also a great opportunity on social media to get your work seen, and to find others sharing in the hashtag. But what should have been a fun art event\/challenge to play around with ink, it instead came with this pressure that one needed to produce a polished piece of art for every single one of those 31 days. But I actually had a lot of fun doing Inktober in 2016 despite struggling on a few days. And I was so proud of finishing the challenge on time and that had me excited for 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 2017, the theme I chose was my Oracles of the Wild series<\/a>. I was so proud of each mask design, but the online reception they received really took the wind out of my sails. And by the 15th piece or so, I was completely dejected from participating but I powered through anyway because I wanted to finish what I started.
This is a common complaint among creatives online\u2014working so hard on something and not really getting the feedback you were hoping for when sharing on social media. Normally, I don’t allow the numbers to have any sort of influence or hold over me, the way I create, or how I perceive my work.
But there are times when it does<\/em> get to me, and it certainly got to me in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still thought they were really cool designs and I worked so hard on them! So I decided that I was not going to let my efforts and ideas go to waste. Fueled by my frustrations, I ended up turning all 31 pieces into enamel pin designs and an art book.
That ended up being a bigger success than simply posting them on social media. And I even sold all of my original pieces I created for that 2017 inktober series. But the stress and sadness really burnt me on participating in monthly drawing prompt challenges. I vowed to never partake in one ever again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Close-up<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Close-up<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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In 2021, I came across the Maysia monthly art prompt and I felt really inspired to create my Wild West Heart zine<\/a> based off of the prompt. I was hesitant because it\u2019d been so long since I tried doing a monthly drawing challenge, but I chose to set better boundaries and expectations with myself to prevent another burn out.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I didn’t get all of my pieces done in the one month because I never intended on doing that, but I did<\/em> finish and felt really good about not just what I created but the process itself because I chose to treat myself\u2014and my creative practice\u2014better vs running myself into the ground.
And I ended up creating a beautiful, meaningful book with all of those illustrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Cover<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Risograph<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Photo<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Photo<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I also purposefully chose to only show these illustrations to my patrons on patreon<\/a> because I knew I would get the feedback I needed to keep me going vs feeling ignored. And that really helped me enjoy the process and feel good about undertaking a large art challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I don’t think I’ll ever participate in a monthly drawing challenge again, but more so use the prompt as inspiration for another zine. Fully completing a polished piece of art every single day for an entire month is an unhealthy goal to place on anyone let alone ourselves. These monthly challenges should be fun and can be an opportunity to hone our skills, but it’s just not realistic to participate with certain expectations and levels of polish that social media may pressure us into believing is required.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It started with Inktober of 2016.Inktober is an annual drawing challenge where artists create one piece every day for the month of October using the medium of ink. It sounds like a great concept to not only push you to draw something every day, but it can also challenge you to use a medium that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,27],"tags":[16,28],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-brain-dump-2","tag-art","tag-brain-dump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2185,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions\/2185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lioninthetrees.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}