Hosting an IG Art Challenge
...some honest thoughts.
Hello friends.
Have you ever wished you could host your own art challenge?
Or do you dream of being asked to co-host with some of your favourite illustrators?
Perhaps you’re like me and in the middle of hosting one you swear you’ll never do it again… only to agree to another one less than two-weeks later.
Actually that last bit isn’t true for me as I rarely sign up to co-host a challenge without at least a two month break in-between.
The reason? Its exhausting. And super time consuming.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good art challenge. There’s something so special about putting an idea out there and seeing it inspire creativity in others.
I recently hosted a ‘draw this in your style’ challenge, which incidentally, was the best one i’ve hosted to date - so many amazing interpretations of my original idea, each one personal to the artist, and each with their own little touch of individual style and pizazz!
If you were one of the many that joined then a big thank you to you! It was a fab couple of weeks with some amazing entries.
Here are nine of my favs:
You can check out the IG accounts of the featured artists here:
From left to right:
Knuckle Salad - Kristina Ackerman
Back to the subject of challenge hosting.
This love-hate relationship I have with art challenges may of course just be me, as I see plenty of artists hosting back to back challenges - perhaps they love them, perhaps they don’t, perhaps they just need to practice saying no. Whatever the reason, they seem to have an impressive ability to juggle both time and creative drive - they’re certainly a lot more ‘creatively-able’ than I am.
They could of course just be much quicker, much more organised illustrators…. that’s inherently possible.
For me, hosting a challenge is always, well, a challenge.
I blame my perfectionist personality which renders me incapable of doing a half-arsed job of anything.
To tackle a task i’ve been set with anything less than one hundred percent commitment is just not a feasible option for me. And so begins the hours (and I do mean hours) of scrolling IG, attempting to leave a thoughtful comment on every entry I find because quite honestly, If people are going to take the time to sketch and finish an illustration, and then go through the rigmarole of tagging who they’re supposed to tag, adding the specific hashtag/s, uploading a second slide, thinking up a clever caption etc, etc then i’m certainly going to do my level best to leave a decent comment, and hopefully try and spread a bit of artistic joy around the place =)
No matter what your feelings towards IG art challenges, they are a wonderful way to connect with others, share art, try new things, pick up tips, and interact with the lovely artist community over on instagram.
If you are someone who hosts challenges on the regular, I salute your endeavours! You are an illustration dynamo!
If you’re someone who likes to enter art challenges and maybe on occasion didn’t receive feedback on your work then please don’t feel discouraged. The chances are the challenge hosts collapsed out of sheer exhaustion and didn’t intentionally miss your entry =)
And so, there you go. A rambled chat about IG art challenges… you’re welcome.
And on that note, this seems the perfect juncture to announce that i’ll be co-hosting another one very soon!
I’ve teamed up with fellow picture book illustrators:
Supported by the art gallery @iloveIllustrators
For the wondrous…drumroll please… #animalfriendsartchallenge!
A truly lovely, super relaxed challenge all about animals and what they get up to with their pals =)
If you're an art challenge kinda person then I hope you’ll join us!
You can find out all you need to know here: Animal Friends Art Challenge
It starts May 1st and it’s sure to be lots of (thoroughly exhausting) fun!
Happy drawing friends =)
Caroline ✏️✨
#animalfriendsartchallenge
If you’re interested to hear another take on what it’s like to host an art challenge you might like this fun video by April Howlett aka: Monkey Mintaka
Birbfest 2023 | My experience hosting an art challenge
In this Youtube video April talks about her experience of co-hosting the art challenge #birbfest (which is awesome btw) and she also shares some super cool footage of her creating colourful, quirky, stylised birds - it’s sure to make you want to reach for your sketchbook!
Enjoy!
Why is always the fun little challenges on instagram 😭 I’m missing out on so much for not using instagram anymore.
I agree with you wholeheartedly!!! Folktale Week practically kills me, and it's only gotten harder year after year. I've somewhat learned to chill on the comments, but I go way overboard reposting art, because as you say, it feels important to give back to the people who've invested so much time in the challenge. But I can't physically share everyone, and that always bums me out quite a bit. Of course Folktale Week always ends with me thinking NEVER AGAIN, and then I go right ahead and agree to co-host Happy Pets Week! So yeah...right there with ya! 🤪