Art Challenges: How to Use them to Grow | Sova Huova | Skillshare
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Art Challenges: How to Use them to Grow

teacher avatar Sova Huova, illustrator, artist and creative

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:51

    • 2.

      What Can You Get

      1:49

    • 3.

      Personal Projects

      2:21

    • 4.

      Therapeutic Approach: 30 Days of Painting Minerals

      5:40

    • 5.

      One Year Project Experience: 365 Days of Logos

      5:01

    • 6.

      Challenging yourself with others

      4:08

    • 7.

      Creative approach with Marie-Noëlle Wurm

      9:26

    • 8.

      Modyfying an Art Challenge with Weronika Salach

      5:10

    • 9.

      Inktober experience with Anna Sokolova

      2:06

    • 10.

      Organizing a challenge

      2:12

    • 11.

      Ups and Downs of Challenging others: Rekindle Memories

      4:53

    • 12.

      Organizing an Art Challenge: Animal Inktober

      5:36

    • 13.

      Growing on Social Media

      2:37

    • 14.

      Hashtags and Growing the following with Mariya Popandopulo

      11:43

    • 15.

      The Topic and the Length

      3:16

    • 16.

      Overcoming the Bad Days and Closing

      3:35

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About This Class

If you are following creative scene lately,  you might have noticed the current trend of art challenges on social media. This class is all about sharing the experience with art challenges and creative commitments. I invited special guests to this class, fellow artists, creatives and teachers, to talk about their projects, approaches, and experience.

My goal is to teach you how to use art challenges to grow:
- professionally and artistically
- expand your social media (especially Instagram)
- art challenges can get you new clients or work opportunities (by showing a new way of your work)

We will learn about:

- different kinds of challenges
- we will examine the topic selection
- using right hashtags on IG to grow your account
- choosing the right challenge and topic most helpful in the stage of your artistic journey
- how to overcome unsuccessful days or lack of motivation
- organizing a challenge for others
- artists and creatives will talk about their previous experience

Who is this class for:

Beginner artists - Art Challenges might help to boost their creativity and skills.
Intermediate artists - The right challenge might help you to make your step to become professionals.
Pros- The challenges might help to grow your social media or overcome creative blocks.

Special guests / Interviews:

Marie-Noëlle Wurm: website / classes / instagram

Roland Huse: website / instagram / Youtube

Elisa Choi Ang: instagram / website / classes

Anna Sokolova: instagram / website / classes

Marika Popandopulo: @pinks_and_roses / instagram / classes

Weronika Salach: instagram / classes / Youtube

(Thank you so so much for sharing your point of view!)

and me:)

Sova Huova: website / instagram / classes

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Sova Huova

illustrator, artist and creative

Teacher

You might have noticed the trend of participating in art challenges on social media. This class is all about sharing the experience with art challenges and creative commitments. I invited special guests to this class to talk about their projects, approaches, and experience.
 

I'm an illustrative artist and educator. You can find me online as @nestingspirits. I like to experiment and share the process along the way. I make illustrations for kids and dreamlike art. Currently, I focus on building an offline place for artists and creatives to meet and create in Prague, Czech Republic.
Here on Skillshare, I teach courses on traditional illustration techniques for beginners and other simple creative techniques for fun.

nestingspirits@gmail.com

... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: If you are following created steam lately, you might have heard about our challenges on social media or from your friends. But how to get through in our challenge and how to create one. This class is all about sharing the experience, this art and creative commitments that you made, and it to yourself or to somebody else. I don't sure know how I go to MR Two challenges that I created during 2018 and I also invited special guests to this class fellow artists greatest and teachers to talk about their projects, approaches and experience. My goal is to teach you how to use our challenges to Roe a professionally, artistically, but also to expand your social media, especially instagram. I'll get your clients or work opportunities. You learn about different kinds of challenges and talk about the famous months. We will examine the topic selection using grad hashtag X, and tried to pick the challenge right for your purpose. Also, we will discuss how to do with unsuccessful days and lack of motivation. The glass might help artists and greatest at all levels. Our challenge is gonna help beginner, stupid stay, creativity. It can help artists who are ready to take their art career seriously to become professionals and direct challenge might even help experts who experience the like off motivation to great every day or to increase their reach. These challenges are usually personal projects that stick with you for some time, so it might be important to spend a moment thinking about your decision. Where to invest the effort. This class is for you if you feel creative and you are ready to take the next step with your plans. 2. What Can You Get: Why should you even make it a commitment and what can you get? I know I need a commitment to work consistently when I don't commit to a certain idea. I lose motivation after several days and moved to the projects that make more money, are simply lose myself in administrative tasks is in my art business. It's very easy for me to move from art creation to administrative only. And after two weeks I can discover that I didn't make a growing for so long. And I feel awful like an artist who doesn't do art. So I've learned to use TR challenges in many ways to keep me working consistently. Brevin Burnouts. They can have some therapeutic affect to market my products because it's so easy to connect . Our challenges will give ways to grow. My social media do grow my portfolio dramatically, to connect with like minded people or to develop a new skill, our certainty in a field which is new for me. Wouldn't it be perfect if you can come up with a challenge which can help you with all the previous point? Unfortunately, I don't think it's so easy, for example, and in directions on social media are stressful for me because I'm stressed by watching people liking or not liking my post. So if I post everything from the challenge on Instagram, it couldn't be very therapeutic for me. But we can try to discover a challenge which might help you to check more than one point from the previous list. Take your worksheets now and try to fill in the first exercise which might help you to decide what you're standing point and in which parts off your creative carrier. The challenge might help you, but 3. Personal Projects: different kind off our challenges and different approaches the popularity off our challenges in various kinds off certain days or 100 days projects certainly grew a lot since 2009 when interoperable settled by. Take Parker. If you follow some artistic accounts on Instagram, you might have noticed that this fall to winter looked almost like we don't have anything better to do than to work on our in October's and Rollo Wien's. It seems like some of us are even getting nervous when you can't participate in the important challenges. So this doesn't have to be your case. I think the most important thing is to pick your why we can divide our challenges into treatment categories. There are personal challenges. Personal challenges are Aldo's pick your number days projects. You can take a photo every day for a month, or you can make local every day for one year. You can choose any topic you will be working on you can, but you don't have to share your progress on social media. You can share only decorations you liked. Two main characteristic is that you make a commitment to yourself. Last march, I decided I will pain, certain minerals. I posted only some of them on Instagram, and I wasn't sure about my intention back then. I will talk about this later in more detail, but I think you get the idea. There doesn't have to be any hash tax. Everything can be private and safe, personal. Our challenges might help you to work consistently, but they need the commitment work from you. You are probably not getting much support from others. If you don't decide to show your broke on social media, and even when you choose to do so, it might take some time before you're following notice and support you. These challenges will help you to grow your portfolio because you will end up with 30 50 or even 100 new pieces. You can be sure that you'll learn a lot when you pick a project like this one to complete. So now that I gave you some general idea what kinds of our challenges are, I would like to provide you with some details. Let's have a closer look at some personal challenges. First 4. Therapeutic Approach: 30 Days of Painting Minerals: last March, I challenged myself to paint semi obstruct minerals in watercolors for one month every day . I was really stressed back then because I've worked only on my book for six months, and I had a tiny crying baby everywhere I went, so I needed some relief. I have no idea why exactly. I became obsessed with the Stones. I think watching their coming textures was really peaceful for me. Also, from my natural inspiration. There wasn't much left at the time, So instead of climbing the hills and mountains, I got lost in the Dexter's of these miniature landscapes. So I collected some of these stones for my project. I had some from my mom who decorates her apartment with these sort of things. Semi. Both, and I started with the simple pictures showing what I saw and continued to more complex situations and images. I had uncertain plan that I could make a little exposition with them in some cafe of, and I started to challenge, which I didn't so far, to be honest, but the main reason I chose this topic was that I wanted to rest while staying creative. I had limited time for this every day. Sometimes I spent two hours with one off them. Sometimes it was minutes. Some of the paintings, they're quite good and some of them variant, even good enough to keep. I knew this would make a new section off my portfolio, one that will be more abstract. I interpreted textures at it, my own visions. This challenge was really therapeutic for me because I left grating with all the textures. It was a play with pigments and water. I totally recommended creating abstract art for therapeutic reasons, sir, Today's turned out to be a little longer than I wanted to spend with this kind of work. I think I missed one day, but I had two different day where I planted two paintings. So my advice for you choose your topic carefully to something you love for a temporary obsession, which was my case. Meanwhile, I made some post for March me to make a challenge, and I realized that I might describe my experience later in a skill share class which made Mayer last days during the challenge more meaningful. Also at the end, when I felt like giving up when I pushed myself to paint, I created two paintings that have been much more popular than my other brains. So even when you feel like it's the same thing all over during the challenge, there might be achievements that you can discover only with the perspective that you get this time. The result off my challenge was this series of 30 more or less abstract paintings, which I'm going to upload in my shop in future. Not all of them, and not all advance. Some are already turned into prints. Some resonate with the rest off my work really well, and some are quite different. And my usual. I think I was quite good working, but all that in watercolors before I started this project. But going through oldies gave me even more certainty and more control. If you can even say this when you deal with with watercolor techniques, I also learned to put my ideas into new compositions. When we are talking about the impact on social media, I think for some of my full overs my Children shovels somewhat disappointing. They were used to get favorite a mood from me and all those cute creatures, and then all of a sudden, these weird abstractions were over. I even heard one off my fall overs thing to my husband that I'm putting these strange shells on my Aggie old time. So the consistency of your instagram account is definitely something to consider. You might lose some people if you create something truly different from your art drugs before. But if you want to do this kind of things in the future, maybe you don't need it. These people, if you pursue an artist career, you need followers who love your work as a taste. I hope you will get me right on my status for being inconsistent. On the contrary, Once you make your decision on your artistic style and get your audience, it can be more difficult to achieve changes. If you challenge yourself only to Brock Days, I recommend posting only some of your creations or great a separate account for debt or share it on skill share instead. If you already have some number off followers and decorated feet of your best works, don't image it. If you want to post everything, try to find a topic which is close to your usual or two connected somehow. Visual topic as I did. Fortunately, the fall over who didn't particle literally enjoy my abstractions didn't and follow me for debt. And I also got some commissions from new people who were attracted by this new topic. So I think it was rooted in my case. When I was creating, I decided to call them portals to other votes. Each of them seemed like a door to some other universe. But later I came with small, matching name landscapes off the soul because when I started, I repeated the textures, and when I continued, I had complete stories, and landscape's going on in the shapes off these slices. If you work for longer, you can create a hashtag is the name of your Children so that your posts are easily searchable. But be prepared to this hedge tickets writer for your personal use. And now let's have a look on Roland's personal Children. It was far more ambitious than mine, and his completely different approach to the topic 5. One Year Project Experience: 365 Days of Logos: in this lesson, I interviewed my friend Roland, who is a specialist in logos and lettering and type design about his one year project, which was really ambitious and drool on, says I started this Children. Soon after, I have listened to an episode of a podcast gold Sean vest about showing up every day. I came up with this idea that I'm going to create a local concept or lettering piece every day and post it on social media for an entire year. I named it this 365 local daily Challenge, and I archived some off the post over a day, but most of them can still be found on my instagram feed under the hashtag 365 logo daily. It's kind of like when you decide to start broking out. The challenge was basically a year long commitment to progress and grow. I announce it on my website beforehand, hoping that it would help me to keep me on track and not to quit. It was exciting and intimidating at the same time. It's like when you are afraid of flying like I am, but you want to get to places and explore the world, so you just suck it up and fly anyway. Through this project, I have tried and learned plenty off new techniques, got connected with fellow designers and make new friends like you. Thank you. Most of these birds were lettering based, such as logo types, hand ledger adverts, sometimes local marks. I wanted to keep a diverse, so I was experimenting with all kinds of different tools, from Japanese brash, homemade, folded Ben to iPad lettering, just to name a few. It was an incredibly productive and inspiring experience. I started on January the first, and when it was coming to an end, I thought I would just keep going without noticing or announcing anything. Then, after a month or so, I eventually stopped posting everyday slow down and began focusing on the process and presenting the way I work. Instead of just producing a new piece each and every day, I think one year is just about enough time to find your style and choose to direction. You want to continue going? Looking back, I would say it went relatively easy, but it's not entirely true. I often found myself struggling with staying accountable. After all, I think I had, like, seven days in total when I missed posting because off personal or other reasons, I haven't prepared any work ahead of time. So I had no content. Buffer adore. Nothing was scheduled. It was a real time daily hostile. I was about to give up a couple of times when I was like, You know, nobody really cares. Since that you can be bumped and motivated for 365 days straight, right? There are just way too many ups and downs within a year. The lack of traction and engagement, especially in the beginning, was also discouraging. I kept gaining and losing full over us after each post because of these automated follow and unfollow boats. I hate them and that was really confusing. By the end of the challenge, I didn't even have 365 followers because my minimum expectation, But as I mentioned, I made new friends, enjoy the process, attracted great clients and became better at what I do. So I'm happy I did it, but all the pieces came out the way I wanted or represent equality I was aiming for. I put a lot off in perfect an unfinished Burke out there. But some results turned out really amazing and got direction and engagement that always encouraged me did. Hey, I'm actually getting better. Let's keep going in my opening in content marketing isn't really working these days. I think it is more important to Corretja work you share and let the audience take a look behind the scenes. They want to see the process and get to know a little bit off your story instead of just seeing the finished. For if I was gonna do another challenge, I think I would try to involve more people or just make a syriza about one specific team like let's say, animals of inter or 30 days of this and debt. I think that would make more sins. Ultimately, all that matters is hard work and that you do it every day. Your best work is ahead as one off my favorite goals. Tests 6. Challenging yourself with others: in October. Skill share. Fearless are jumpstart with marine oil. She will be talking about it later. Recognized memories with Eliza and all those new hashtags that are popping up on instagram are kind of in between personal challenges and challenging other people. Greatest that you have a community to support you and to help you to commit to the process of creation. This should increase your motivation. You will discover the topics you might not think about because there is usually some kind of prompt lists which is set up by the host, and these prompt lists can be really inspiring. So that's a great thing. You come to the new topics and you make them your own. There is, however, one disadvantage, which might be a problem for the artist who don't have enough time. Maybe you would seriously like to, Let's say, use this technique like thinking for 30 days. But why the hell would you draw a chicken? Maybe chicken is really not your think. The challenge, maybe so, resonating with your style and topics like folk tale week with mine. There is nothing to change, but maybe not, and you still want to get the advantages off the community and using specific hashtag. I think it's OK to change it and interpreted for your purpose if you stick within certain boundaries like you don't boast a selfie under his shtick. Folk Tale Week While folk tale Big was exactly as it sounds, growing challenge where you should create our Berg's connected to folk motives, I think it's also okay to use certain challenge to create only some posts. We have so many options now, but if you make days be a there that you are simply using the challenge for inspiration and you are not challenging yourself, this challenge is definitely help you take from your following, because using the hashtag makes your art easily searchable. And people who search for you are other artists and people engaged in this topic. You can use these challenges to promote your products and out Brooks Indirectly. I would recommend not to do so unless you are asked by a prompt. Let's mention a reliever was inherit 21 days In my artful challenge, she asked people to share a book. It could be a book that inspired you that you wrote any book, so I shared my inking animals, the art book I wrote and other off my favorite our books. If you create an artwork for the challenge for its specific topic and then say it's for sale under the boast and name your price or use a link to your issue, I think it's also okay unless the host of the challenge tells you other vice. There are also other kinds of challenges within this category, lying to challenges introducing the artists and creatives like Marchment, The maker challenge these air for you If you are trying to find a new way to introduce your broke to social media to show your process, but you are not feeling comfortable promoting yourself, it's easier to flow with the others and being asked this challenge to help me some month ago to put more story into my feet, and I'm still learning other kinds. Off challenges within this category are one time projects like the popular Draw It Again. Challenge for you would, well, one off your old works and city improvement are challenges were use limited tools, LTD, color palette, cheap art supplies and others. You can find them on YouTube. Be so kind if you learn about an exciting challenge posted to our discussion section, I will try to collect all the challenges I'll learn about and put them to the list, which you can download along with the broke sheets for this class. 7. Creative approach with Marie-Noëlle Wurm: my first guest who will be talking about our challenges completed along with other people is marine oil. She's an artist, illustrator and skill share teacher based in Montpellier, France, and she will introduce the challenge called Fearless Are Jumpstart that she started. She will explained it. Our challenges are an opportunity for you to grow artistically and that there are other kinds of success than likes on social media or posting cure art every day. Hi, my name is Marina. Well, worm. I'm an artist and illustrator and also a top teacher on skill share, and I was invited by Silva to answer questions about our challenges. So I'm excited to get started. And first of all, I'm going to talk to you about one of the are challenges that I created on skill share, and it's called the Fearless Art Jump Start. And it's actually a 14 day drawing challenge where I was kind of trying to bring people to a place where they could start to jump out of their comfort zones and develop their creativity and try new things. That's something that I'm really passionate about, anything that relates to creativity and how to overcome creative hurdles and really delve into things that you maybe haven't explored before. Try something new and take risks and also learn to accept the mistakes. Were the bad drawings that happened along the way? Because if you're not making mistakes, if you're not making any bad drawings, then you're probably not learning a lot. And so that's actually something that's really difficult when it comes to our challenges is that people will often have a very strong sense of internalized pressure. Okay, I'm doing this challenge. I need my drawings to be perfect. They need to be instagram worthy, and I don't actually think that that's necessarily the best way to go about our challenge. If you end up doing creating drawings that you're really proud of them, that's awesome. But to me and our challenge is less about what it is that you have to show to others in the end, and more about the journey that you take as you're doing this challenge and exploring new things and what are you learning and taking away from it for the future. So actually I created a hashtag for the challenge that I created, and the hashtag is fearless. Our challenge. So if ever you are thinking of participating, we want to participate. You can use the hashtag on Instagram in order for me to find you and other also for other people, from the challenge to find that doesn't take away from what I just said that you don't need to create instagram worthy pictures. And if you don't feel comfortable sharing on instagram or in a public wait, that's totally fine. That's not the important thing for me, at least when I created this challenge, or even when I participate in my own challenges linking Tober or folk tale week, or whatever other artistic challenges are out there because there's a lot. So the way that I decided about the topics is related to my own artistic journey, because I was always kind of interested in art. But I wasn't, I would say, naturally talented as some people can be. And if you're familiar with my classes, you might know that I have a serious problem with the word talent because I think that that already creates a lot of inner hurdles and kind of blocks us from accessing the part of us that wants to be creative anyway. So I had all these blocks and hurdles that I had built up for myself, which made me believe that I couldn't be creative and I couldn't be an artist, and I would never be able to get to the level that I am. And luckily, along the way I met some amazing teachers and mentors who helped me unlock all these creative blocks. And I've learned a lot of things from them and also along the way from things of red. And things have picked up here, left on discussions about creativity. And so when I created the challenge, I really wanted to focus it on these aspect on the aspect of developing your artistic vision, making mistakes, exploring new things, trying to expand your own vision of what it is that you're capable of doing. So I wanted to create prompts that were specific, yet open ended. I really wanted them to be kind of like a jump start, like a little slicker for a fire so that it would give you just a little tiny impulse to get started. But then that there are so many ways that you can interpret each prompt that you actually delve deeper into yourself as you're creating in these prompts. So that's the way that I decided the topics of that child. So one thing in particular is with challenges, you know, like the one I created is 14 days, and most challenges have a set amount of time to them. And of course, it could be really great to do the challenge every day and have one finished drawing every day. But I know that also sometimes it's not very realistic and life can catch up with you. And then you may be fail once and one of the days you don't do it. And then often what happens is that then you think, Oh well, I failed the challenge because of missed out on a day. So I'm just not gonna do the next day or the day after that, and then you just completely abandon. And I know that that's the case, because it's something that I've done in the past with challenges that I participated in like October, Rather than being rigid about getting each drawing done every day, I think the more important thing is to get the entire thing done, no matter how long it takes you. So this is something that I say also in the fearless. Our challenge is that if you can't do it every day, may be decided to do one drawing every two days, one drying every three days. And that's fine as well. The most important thing is what you're going to be learning as you're doing it and just finishing it. So like I said earlier, the most important thing to me is not necessarily creating drawings that you're happy with . To me, that's actually a byproduct of the creative journey rather than the goal. So to me, than goal is actually to reconnect with the inner child that exists within all of us, and that just enjoys playing and exploring and creating. And if you actually go about any sort of challenge or any drawing with that mindset, then often I feel that you end up creating work that you're more proud of in the end, and that's also more authentic. And sometimes you won't. Sometimes you'll end up connecting with that mindset and creating something that's not that good to look at, but it doesn't really matter. The most important thing is the process and what you learn from it and what you enjoyed and what you can take away for the future. Another thing that challenges convey really good for is to help you build a consistent practice. I know that that could be like, really stressful, too create on a consistent basis and sometimes challenges congee. Just be away off igniting that energy that fire to get it done and to also be part of a community of people who are all trying to work on themselves together. So that's pretty cool way of going about it, too, sometimes at the end of the child at the end of a challenge. So let's say October than you'll have an array of finished drawings. And sometimes you'll have an array of some drawings that you like, something you don't like, something that you ate and something you absolutely love. And all of those things have value, and I would say that we shouldn't negate the ones that we also don't like or hate. There's so much to be learned from those, So if the end of your challenge you have more drawings that you don't like them drawings that you like, we'll try to focus on what it is that is interesting about these drugs that you don't like . What can you do differently so that in the your next challenge, you're doing something that's a little bit more connected to your creativity and a sense of playfulness and sense of fun? One of the things I loved seeing the most with the fearless. Our challenge was seeing how varied all the drawings that people created were. And that, to me, is a testament to the fact that they were really trying to explore and connect with their own creativity. So I hope that that's something you'll keep in mind for your own future challenges is to make it be you create work that reflects your creativity, even if that means creating bad drawings or mistakes along the way. It's all part of the artistic process, so enjoy it. 8. Modyfying an Art Challenge with Weronika Salach: Veronica is an artist based in Berlin, part time yoga teacher, and she teaches start classes on skill share. She will tell us about her experience with E Ink Tober Challenge. Did she joined and visiting? She learned a long survey. It was my second time planning to join Inc Taubira, and this time I even prepared my own promptly. I knew I'd have relatively enough time to do that, and I wanted to see if I can persevere. I'm a part time yoga teacher, but my main job is in the field off online marketing. My marketing job needs me to push true, So I wanted to see if I can translate this frame of mind into our especially from the Yogi self care perspective. I've always had this thing with Japan, so I've made my own list. Inspired by some Japanese motive, I felt very driven into 1st 2 weeks off the challenge where I really drew every day and then it's expected. My energy level completely changed, and I decided to quit the challenge. I've made a video about it on my YouTube channel, explaining my reasons from a Buddhist perspective. In other words, I wasn't able to overcome it. I just quit and diverted my energy into something different, something that served me more and gave me more fun. Imagine Devoto Element. I didn't new Senate ing by quitting. I just flew in some other direction, like voter. Yes, I was very happy with every piece that I created for ink number, mainly because my prompt list waas really thought true. And it only included things that I really wanted to try out growing. I believe it is really hard to keep up for 30 days with someone else's list, which is basically someone else's bones or ideas. I was the happiest is this picture, and I even liked it so much to turn it into a T shirt design. Absolutely. I broke this blowing hands, and I got much more familiar with the Japanese patterns, especially the motive of Japanese, all the shapes that you need to become about off your visual library. I've noticed it's easier for me to reuse them right from my head in my further rolling's about the impact of my social media. I think my list was very well received and people appreciated my consistency and similar color palette. I wanted to participate for the sake of participating. I also wanted to check if I'm gonna make it through out of the challenge I realized next year I won't participate, or at least not to the fullest, maybe selectively and based exclusively on how much fun I can get out of it. I also created a least one good design which I can use later own for my merchandise. I can advise thing clear about what your goals are, and if you'd like to put through the challenge than preparation is the key for some people . Unfortunately, it is hard because in the real world we have to go to school or to work. And when we come back home, we are tire. In such a case, it is a really good idea to reach a compromise by splitting the challenge. For instance, for the Merriman a month, instead of posting commitment every day, I committed to two pieces perfect one often actual mermaid and the murderer. Since I am a yoga teacher, often illustration of a mermaid post from yoga. This way I kept in mind, but I still felt like I'm a part of the challenge. So listen to what your heart and your energy level say. And don't be afraid to modify. So did Indian to you. Stay happy and you don't end up tired or frustrated. And lastly, temper yourself. Be good to yourself. You some incentive to get going by new fences, pains any other offensive digits. Get a nice shiny sketchbook for the purpose and condoning the school stickers and even though it sounds so blah, have fun. 9. Inktober experience with Anna Sokolova: Anna is an illustrator and sculpture teacher living in Berlin, Germany. She's going to share her experience with the last October challenge. I work as a commercial artist, so taking part in a creative challenge like in October was a great chance to focus on. Some players in the project in October has an official list off 30 even prompts, and it's just too much for me. You comfortable number would be around eight. I've said, too goes for this October 1st, I was inspired by service book thinking animals, and naturally, I want to doing some forest animals. You can see the result also, at the time, I was asked to create a review for a new schedule, so the second goal was to try the color things on the sketchbook toned paper. I've created a short video for Dead, and I guess it was the most popular off my ink Tober entries. Since the video tends to work better than any other static image on Instagram, I've accomplished both off my goals, I said. It's crucial for successful challenge to have some realistic goals, like practicing a little bit every day or trying new art supply or creating a series off artworks for your online store. I've also organized two big challenges this year of his guys from skill share. Bring Spring Challenge and Dream if S Challenge. It was a great experience because sometimes it's hard to collaborate for creative folks. Everyone is very focused on his own practice. It's a great feeling to see how challenge begins to live its own life, and people get to know each other and find themselves new creative friends. But honestly, it takes pretty much time. You are welcome to join US art classes on skill share and follow her on Instagram. There she shares her beautiful creations. 10. Organizing a challenge: okay Challenges for others. If you are feeling established in your creative era, you can come up with the challenge where you write your own prompt list. You can host the challenge for other people, but this comes with a certain responsibility. Will you be able to motivate others enough to create? Will you be able to post your own content on time? No. There'll be a give way going to do the challenge. And if yes, what are the rules to participate? For others, it's important to set up realistic goals and pick a topic for you if you're comfortable. But also feel free to make mistakes and talk about them. I mean, you are human. It would be veered if you create only perfect art. This topic should be inspiring for others. Also, it's important to consider right timing you probably don't want to compete with in October or some other hype. You will have to in went right hashtags that are not going to mix up with others. If the number off posts under the hashtag used for your new challenges lower than a few 100 you should find your time to go through all the posts submitted under your hashtag advise your people will feel disappointed when you are lucky and your challenge turns out to be a huge success. You obviously can't comment or like all the posts. But hopefully a lot of other people started following this hashtag and they comment on each other's creations. These challenges will force you to work consistently unless there is something serious going on. If you know that people are waiting to see your content, it will push you to create. I would say the days challenges are redder stressful than two robotic, but the depends on your nature. You will undoubtedly meet new amazing people on social media. Once you organize them, it's your challenge and your rules so you can promote your artworks and product as you wish . If you don't feel confident enough to organize the challenge yourself, it might be a great idea to host. It fits other artists that are your friends and that you know that are reliable 11. Ups and Downs of Challenging others: Rekindle Memories: another guest who will talk about the ups and downs off organizing Challenge, ELISA Inc She is the artist behind Harmony, Thoughts and Out has been having interests, and she was a child. She teaches art classes for Children and young adults and publishes online art classes about sketching and painting in motor color. ELISA empowers artists to use their creativity and to enjoy the process off making art inspired bar their stories She's passionate about reckoned in life's memories through sketching, painting wherever we are and sharing it to inspire others. Mr Rekindle Memories. First of all, I would like to thanks over from nesting spirits for allowing me to share with you about her Kindle memories. It is such an honor to be part of her casts. Rekindle Memories started on July 2017 as a Monday challenge, celebrating life's moments from past the present by sketching and painting wherever we are in the world to the participants from 14 countries, participate in this fund and heartwarming activity, and I welcome you to join. You can sketch or paint any subjects that capture your interest. Use the hashtag rekindle memories when you poster artworks in Instagram or Facebook You can also email their artworks. Toby Rekindle Memories aims to build appreciation off moments in our lives through painting or sketching participants, paint and our sketch moments that enables them to savor what the experience and remember the special moments behind it. This experience is also an opportunity to practised and developed their craft, and sketching and painting rekindled memories is about inspired life memories off artists. They can freely choose subjects or themes that capture their interests. Rekindle memories is a monthly challenge where participants can create one or as many artworks off their memories, some participants to continue to create and post their memories all throughout the month from July 2017 to November 2018 I have created approximately 50 plus artworks off my memories in 28 months. I look back at the journey when I started with just seven. Artist and rekindle memories has been growing steadily from a small group of artists. I am most thankful for the connections and even friendships that blossom through meaningful sharing off our artworks. There were moments when I feel a bit discourage about the outcome off the challenge because off the lower turnout of participants, rekindle memories also takes effort to provide feedback and collect all the art works of the artist. I accepted the fact that there will always be challenges and everything I offer come to discouragement by being thankful off the few that has joined. I also encourage others to share about rekindle memories to their friends who might be interested to join. I tried to comment and collect the art versus they come so that I won't be overwhelmed when curating the digital gallery. Of course, seeing the gallery of artworks was worth all the effort. Rick in the Memories has enabled me to try new ways of painting and sketching and to explore new mediums as well. The challenge also has seen interest from artist globally who wish to take part in the Kindle memories on every middle off the month I could eat a digital gallery off all the memories contributed by virus artists from around the world. This gallery is a testimony off the wonders and beauty that is evident around us in the future. I am exploring on making a book that holds all of this precious memories rekindled memories is the celebration off the stories and memories that connects artist the one another. Many of us have become friends when we share milestones off our lives, like having a baby doing exhibitions, each other we church other and encourage one another in life and in our creative journey, I am so thankful to be part of this community off artists. 12. Organizing an Art Challenge: Animal Inktober: this October. I decided to host the Challenge Gold Animal in October, and I would like to share some things I learned along the way so that you can use them once you decide to organize your own challenges. This time I had experienced after painting demon Els and I was smarter and you did. I wanted to my challenge to bring me some income and other benefit. I created a prompt list with seven animals to paint in ink and watercolors, and I also decided to share my process on HGTV and skill share within my older art class. Whimsical animals with water colors. That way, I knew that the engagement might become higher, then visit the video content. And I also knew that if people wouldn't join the challenge in a way, I expected there will be at least some income for me at the end of the month. From the new videos into skill share classes, I created hashtag X animal in October and ink ink animals for this challenge. Participants were also supposed to take me nesting spirit so that it would be easier for me to find them and distinguish their interest in my challenge. I also decided to connect this challenge with a give way off my book thinking animals because I needed more people to learn about. The book thanked overhauls the perfect occasion to show this book to people. Along with the inking videos. I was also hoping to grow engagement on my INSTAGRAM account. I knew it would be difficult to find following within an October. So what I did was I created a different option for those who would love to join in October but couldn't afford withdrawal for 30 days. Give a was a sweet motivation for those people and 40 topic. One reason why I picked animals was that I knew did the people who join would be interested exactly in my book. Another reasonable, simple, the old love drawing animal illustrations. I started filming the videos two weeks before October because I know that editing takes its time. I left some of the paintings that I created, but being with everything on time was very exhausting because life is life and sometimes kids were sick and I still have to post the video as I promised you can imagine. I also needed to go through all the posts that people send me at the moment. There are 600 for this reports under Animal in October and 309 boast for inking animals. So it was some serious worked er. In the end, I had to pick the winners, and I didn't realize that this could be so difficult and frustrating. Choosing from perfect and detailed illustrations. There's this mom spending with their kids. I picked nine semifinalists, and I let others vote force Refiners. Otherwise I would be completely lost. So lets put together older benefits off animal. In October, for me, people learned about my book inking animals. About 500 new followers followed me on Instagram during October, and I didn't even ask people to follow me. In the challenge. I created I G TV video tutorials for my audience. To learn more about my process, I created new content for my older skill share classes and got some money. From that, I created a new Siri's off paintings called Animal. In October. I sold money prints off them, comparing to my previous sales, and some originals are still waiting to be uploaded to the shop and sold. I know I can use the videos later as a three b on my website to get attention to my online classes, and this freebie will go together with M ism affiliate links for the supplies that I use. I connected this new amazing people and I'm still in touch with some of them. I also made a medical of this my favorite local art supplies store, who supported me by showing my birth and delivering part of the price for the give away everything. It was quite successful. The most important thing here was planning. It really wasn't a spontaneous one. It took me months tooting about all the ways for the use off the content off the challenge in the best way off course. I didn't dedicate all my time to debt, but once in a while I was brainstorming all my options. I was also planning to prompt list in advance. I wanted the animals to be popular for my audience to draw, but I also intended them to be suitable with my artistic style and topic. Unfortunately, I didn't learn in a new painting skills here, but I definitely practice being effective. I think this principle is useful in your artistic career. Whatever you do, you don't have to be inventing the challenge. But when you create some content illustrations, videos, tutorials, block boasts, you can always think vice if you can use it for different purposes and even monetize it in some way. Dever People asking me for the prompts for the next year already. But honestly, I'm not sure if I will be available to make the same amount off effort next year. However, if you post your artist animals from the prompts or any other painted animals under a hashtag thinking animals and dick nesting spirit, I will get to your work and comment on it, so feel free to join. The exposure is, unfortunately, not so biggest during the challenge. 13. Growing on Social Media: no even true treatment types off our challenges that you can meet on the Internet and showed the examples that you can get inspired from or join. There are, however, some important points I want to get back to. Let's start this growing on social media. This might be one off your primary motivations for joining a challenge, but how to do it right? If you want to bring new followers to your account, the challenge you choose should be connected to some high. This could be ater a quickly growing challenge or a particle style of drawing, and I think specific enough to have its niche and community off users that will support you . And he should support them to. I think the interchange is very important here. You should invest something to the new community when you want to take from it. Your followers come to you almost exclusively by using interesting cash sticks, meaning hysterics related to the challenges you might even try to use Mortal and chest X for one of your posts, like his taking October animal in Cobra thinking animals. And let's say creep Tober, if you're drawing, it's also scary. I've seen people doing this regularly. This part time participating doesn't bring human new skills, but it helps your heart to be searchable. If you post every day in, say, Granville, show your posts to more people. And chilling just are a perfect location to help you create content for every day. On the other hand, there's one thing I should say about the big challenges like in October. Once the challenge becomes popular, it gets more difficult to be displayed in the first post off the hash. If the most important thing to you is the success of your post, my advice is to find challenges at the beginning off the hype. If you create a beautiful artwork and you posted as one off the firsts, there is a very real chance that your art will stay there for quite some time. New people will be coming to your post hoping that you will get back to their work, but you shoot. In this case, smaller challenges might bring que more likes than the big ones unless you already have thousands of followers. If you already have the followers, then there is a chance that you will stay on the top even in the big challenges. So taking in October now and hoping that your art will be found into thousands off other Beautiful Inc post Well, let's say you would be very lucky. You need to add something new to days, like artists who make walks off their October process or something like that at something specific only for you to be found. 14. Hashtags and Growing the following with Mariya Popandopulo: and because I grew only a few hundreds of followers during my challenges, I decided to invite one more guest here with an expert on growing hair following through the hashtag 100 Days project, Meet Maria, who's a photograph for illustrator and also a skill shared teacher and who managed to create an instagram account, Gold, Pinks and Crozes. First I'm asking her about her process and how experienced during the challenge. And then she will talk about the hash sticks and be more specific about the growth of her gown. I wanted to start some kind of sketch comic account for a vile, However I was over its postponing it. My main problem was I had ideas about what I wanted to draw, but I didn't have a corrector. I already decided I wanted to something simple this easy to so that I will be able to sketch undergo so that I would not be discouraged by long growing process. But without the corrector. I hesitated so late in April, I got a random message. Something about the moon face or stars alignment, I'm not sure, but the idea was that if you start something today, it will have really high chances of success. So did evening and the next one I sat down and just tried out different connectors. My major influence in growing style was Game A Coral Zoe See and Hannah Hill. Um, I did get to my character quite fast and got my own better. This one. I haven't changed it intentionally since, although the corrector did change slightly over time to keep myself going with the project . A Joint Tastic 100 a challenge. It started a month before I actually joined, but I still decided to do it anyway. So my challenge posted role lately. Comic every day. For the next 100 days, the idea of an art project wasn't really new to me. I have done 365 days off Photograph E and a couple of shorter project coffee, particular drawings for mom and logo a day for 30 days. So I knew it would be demanding, especially duration. But it turned out just fine. I wanted to start a comic account to portray the little observations moments, awkward things that happened this around me, and I just really wanted to develop a sketchy kind of growing style. Initially, I wanted to just drove is out a pencil sketch. I tried for a couple of days, but it was stressful, so I just went to my normal drawing routine pencil sketch thinking and some Photoshopped editing, like getting cooler and making the background completely bite. Yes, it was a perfect duration not only for developing my style and growing the list of ideas, but also it turned out to be very good in terms of growing full over ship. Basically, when you start is a project that is ongoing. There are a lot of people on the challenge tech that look at other people's project, and they comment on and encourage each other. Not always. I didn't think I missed a lot of days, maybe five in total. And no, I didn't grow everyday eater. Sometimes I would brought through comics at the same time if I was in a mood and just post one the next day. When doing a long project where you commit to work every day, you have to choose something that you won't get bored or something too complex to do every day. For example, I actually started doing comic drawings a year before that But the drawing style was all on computer, and I did four and good quickly bored with that, as every piece took me, like two hours to do so. This time I opted for something that I could do daily, even while traveling off course. But a lot of times I was also why, oh, this book so cool, I guess it's good to have a balance of striving for improvement but still being kind to yourself. And definitely give yourself credit for that. You are sticking with the project Idea generation. Once you set your mind into noticing things that you might be able to grow later, you start to generate ideas. Beginning of this year, I started doing cute portrait commissions into Comex style, but it was so inspiring. I did it again this December, and it's an amazing experience to get to know people, their sorties, their happiness and Rohit. I finished my project in August, marking my hundreds entry, but I continued posting after as well. This was my last picture for the project. And yes, I did. Celebrated respite and some wine be kind to yourself. Even if you skip a day, it's OK. Projects are a super effective strategy to boost your skills. So even if you skip a day or be one day light hey, I will. Sir, Today's light Just keep going. Start business. Shorter ones, for example. Weekly challenges. There's a lot on Instagram. Artists like to start week or month with a growing challenge. Just find the one you like. Pick something you can keep up with. If the drawing Let's say, take you six hours to complete, you might not be able to spend that much time on it every day, so maybe it will be one growing pervy. If your project is based on idea generation like mine, keep a notebook off ideas vis you all the time. Write them down as soon as you have one. And yes, sometimes, okay. A lot of times they will come at inconvenient moments, like when we are about to fall asleep. But ideas can be forgotten really fast to watch out for them from personal experience. Don't start another project right after you just finished one. I mean you can and if you are super productive and strive to continue good for you. In my case. After finishing 1 30 day project. I started another one right of a data. Just four or five entries and Ebondo ended limited time off the project is the good thing about them. You get the sense off accomplishment You have something to show for. Starting next one right of a might feel like you're putting too much pressure on yourself. So have arrest. Congratulate yourself on finishing a project and start new one after sometime. Basically the how I see it, why I grew up so quick. Wait. Is that because I started it with the 100 day project? Even though I started by come once later the community and the hashtag was really active. So like for a couple off, I don't know a system. Once I was going during the hashtag and I was like other people and I would command and people will come back and order will stay Then at some point I started to be trending. Okay, so then I think I trended a couple of times on the hashtag. Basically, hashtags are quite important. When you're growing, you have to find the relevant funds once and tried to be in the top as much as you can So that's what I did. I had, like comics, um, daily comic status sketches and oh, I can't. You can. You will see them in the But obviously, for every art, her tax will be different. Probably You have to go to artists, for example, Uh, you like and see which hashtag stay use if they use any. So that was hashtags then. My timing was really good, because at that point there was a big girl popularity off so called relatable comics. And when I started, I knew just like a couple of artists I was following in Instagram. But then I discovered, like so many more and a lot off girls. I'm like friends and it's the girl with we kind of grew up together, and the growth rates for pretty much everyone in the this niche of comics was really, really big. You have to post regularly. That's why hard a port it is so good because you don't stop when you post regularly. It's, I don't know, maybe it's a gram. Algorithms work better, but it's easier to grow. So I was posting like every when I stopped posting regularly, like now it's my following is not only growing, it's actually starting to fall. So once you start posting there is growing. But actually recently, the girl was really re. So if you stop posting a, the numbers decrease. So it's not just like when you he thought off followers and then you can just relax. No, you actually have to do it regularly. Um, other things that helped me was collaborations with the other similar cones and doing like a double promotion, basically just doing collab the comics together and crowding each other on each other's pages. So that's one of the good ways to increase your rich, sometimes bigger comics account. They do the shout, all shout outs in stories and you can take them or you can in him and ask the mash. So, yeah, I think for my growth it was a combination of good timing. The comics were really on trend at that time, good usage of hashtag Then I also tagged a lot of comic groups. Basically, they're the groups that post comments from different artists sometimes actually get annoyed when they tied like everything. Just before I got like one person complaining to me that I tank them at like at each post. It was like two month no. Two or three months after. And at that time I already had, like, quite all the followers. And I didn't really depend on the tagging off this kind of account, the little magic or anything. And I think it was just a combination of different things that just happened. The comic so popular the hashtag was the 100 day project was really active. Uh, I was very consistent with my posting. I used for the hashtags attacked every comic accounting you. At that point, I did a few collapse, and, um, I think I was promotion What I did, you can also reach out for, like, account to ask if they can mentioned in stories were do a club. Basically, you just asking around. It's a good way Ballade projects a good starting point. It truly motivates you, so I'm probably gonna do that again. 15. The Topic and the Length: try to begin with realistic time expectations. How many days and hours can you afford to spend? Is your project? Are you? Stay at home, mom, and you're going to draw in the evening. Monster Kids are asleep. Are you an artist? Is a day job if you want to spend a month on a challenge than all the other artistic projects would have to obey, is it vaulted? In your case, it's better to think twice about your goals. That way you won't end up disappointed, depending on the time you want to spend on it and the energy you would like to invest. I think the easiest thing to do is to pick someone else's challenge and slightly modified for your purpose. Is Veronica suggested you can avoid that problem is the chicken I was talking about earlier by painting Good Dragon spitting flames to the tiny chicken hidden in the corner. Accept the rules. Get exposure from the hashtag post something. There are so many challenges out there that you will probably find one which suits you. The best personal challenges can get lonely. Even when you talk about the topic with other people, you might sometimes feel like a crazy person like, Yes, that's right. This month, I am pending X. Only you are going to spend quite sometime on that. So to see our topic carefully, I like open ended problems more than the specific ones. But if you are a mermaid painting Clady than a month off mermaids is definitely your best choice. You can even come up this a prompt list where you picked one specific topic every day and then painted in voter colors or whatever medium you like. I like that. My topic this minerals was simple. After a long day, I was pleased that it doesn't take hours to paint it. It's moderating to connect it a big with some use. Like Roland and his logos. He was learning logo design while he was getting more and more clients along survey. So think about the following questions. What do you need this challenge to do for you? Do you need to improve your figurative drawing? Do you already have a topic you would like to pursue, like acrylic landscapes or fantasy landscapes? Do you want to learn new things by taking months? Kosher class A day is your project for practice only, or something he would like to show on your instagram and in your portfolio. Think of all the advantages your topic might bring to you. Which of them sounds like the most exciting options? Does your audiences opinion? Metre. In your case, where will you be sharing your posts? Do you want to share only published results, or are you going to share even the unsuccessful wants? I know I was talking mostly about traditional art, but consider all the creative projects you can make, like illustrate a poem a day or create one pair off earrings from female clay a day. You can even compose music. Quite a page of your journal. Anything great If you can think of complete the brainstorming exercises in the worksheet at first, generate all the topics that come to your mind. Then think about the advantages off the topics and the length to its able to your realistic options. Then try to write down everything about your perfect challenge. 16. Overcoming the Bad Days and Closing: Here are some tips on overcoming the days when you don't feel like growing this money, Noel said. Don't give up just because you missed one day off the challenge. Concentrate on finishing the whole thing. Instead, Try to find a new moderation, as I did with the Minerals, when I realized that I could make a skill share class on our challenges at the moment when I was starting to lose my greatest Bob right. Remind yourself of your goals with the project, or try to think of a few new ones. Imagine how cool it will be. You want to achieve them. Be mindful off the perspective you can get this time. Some of the best works might appear when you are exhausted and don't feel like it. You might even find those drawing strange today because of your mood, but when you come to them later, you might find out that they're fresh and interesting. Another thing you can try, even with the personal project, is committing to your community right. A new statement on your instagram or Facebook. Tell them that you will draw every day since now, if you didn't do this already, This step is a double edged sword, which might help some of you, but it might also bring stress to your creative process. So this one depends on what kind of person you are, whether you feel like a procrastinator or you tend to get over world. Once the project is getting too long, try to make a little switch in your topic or technique, like baiting the structures of the minerals in my case and then painting what you see behind those structures. These little changes might bring in new creative energy, but there's still acceptable is in your original intention. For example, if you paint with watercolors every day off the challenge, print risk coffee pigment one day instead, make Bette R. You don't have to post it anywhere. After all, I created one or two really bad pieces during my challenge so bad that I didn't show them to anybody and was really ashamed for them. But it helped me to continue to the next day without a feeling that I failed and the last one. Don't be too hard on yourself. People are watching you. Are they really? Don't forget that the challenge is here to serve you to bring you some joy. Some knowledge. It's easy to forget about that. But keep in mind that you don't have to serve the challenge. And when you really stop enjoying the process, you can quit. There will be some other good occasions to show your art next time and disclose has come to an end. If you didn't start your worksheets yet, it's time to fill them in. Now if you enjoy the class, I will be very grateful if you leave some feedback. I hope to see your ideas and worksheets in the project section, and I also hope that you will recommend a some new amazing challenges that I don't know about in the discussion below. You can also tell us about the challenges that you are organizing and one more thing. You know how I told you that it might be a good idea to catch the hashtag at the beginning off the hype. If you are participating in an our challenge, why not to take? Also, our challenge is to grow with the post. Maybe it will turn into something bigger. You can also follow the hashtag to learn about the post off other people and we can support each other