30 Day Drawing Challenge for Beginners

Drawing Challenge for Beginners

So here we are… It’s that time of year again. Time to make promises to ourselves. Our motivation is high. We have the best of intentions. There are big changes ahead of us. Maybe it means a 30 day drawing challenge.

For many of us this means losing weight, exercising more, or just making healthier choices in general.

And for some this means making a commitment to draw every day, or at least to draw more often.

A New Year’s Resolution is described as a tradition, most common in the Western Hemisphere, where individuals resolve to accomplish a personal goal or practice self improvement.

Since we are interested in learning about art and drawing here, we will be focused on goals for artists, and the 30 day drawing challenge in particular. And how this type of challenge can help you meet your art goals.

Save Time with a 7 Day Art Challenge

Art Goals

The first thing you need to do is decide on what your art goals are. Do you want to improve your drawing skills in a specific area, such as portraits, animals, or cartoons? Do you want to learn to be more creative, to discover your artistic style, or draw more realistic? Or maybe you just want to be more consistent with your drawing time (starting your own blog is a great way for accountability).

Regardless of your goals, the key to getting better is to draw more often and on a regular basis.

How Often Should You Draw

About this time every year, give or take a couple of weeks, there’s a trend in every artist group you go to. The commitment to draw every single day.

Why not just say draw more often? The reason is simple. It has to do with goal setting philosophy. For a goal to be achievable, and measurable, it has to be specific. If it’s not, how will you know if you’ve met your goal.

So how often should you draw? You should draw as often as possible. The more you draw, the better you will get. Period. If you can increase the amount of time you spend working on drawings, or artwork, you’ll see improvements in your work.

But is it necessary to draw every day? It’s not crucial to draw daily, but it does make it easier to hold yourself accountable. Even if you only spend a few minutes working on part of a drawing. You’ll still see improvements.

The purpose of a daily drawing challenge is to help improve your drawing and observational skills. The more you draw, the better you will get. Repetition will also help improve your creativity.

No matter what your skill level is, you will improve with practice. How quickly you improve will depend on how much you practice. Even if it’s only for a few minutes a day. And if you can practice for a few minutes each day consistently, that will add up to a significant amount of time if you stick with it.

And, for most of us, it’s easy to commit to drawing for a few minutes each day than it is to commit to drawing for several hours every day.

What is a 30 Day Drawing Challenge?

A 30 day drawing challenge means you draw something every day, for 30 days. However, it’s really a little more complicated than that for most of us.

There’s an endless amount of variation possible with this challenge. What you draw and what you use to draw will vary from artist to artist. You might decide to stick with a theme or one type of medium.

Or you might want to make your choices each day and not worry about any kind of theme. What you draw and what you draw with isn’t as important as the act of drawing itself.

The key is to draw something every day, for all 30 days. If you can do this, you will see improvements in your drawing skills.

Drawing Prompts for Beginners

One of the most difficult things about drawing every day is deciding what to draw. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, here are 30 drawing prompts to help you out.

1. Your happy place
2. Flower
3. Cubism self-portrait
4. An object in your house
5. Abstract drawing using only straight lines
6. 3D book
7. Mushroom
8. Robot using only a pen
9. Fireplace
10. Alien
11. Cupcake
12. Tree
13. Piece of fruit
14. Whimsical bird
15. Monstera leaf – contour drawing
16. Your fist car
17. Cup of coffee
18. Something from your imagination
19. Continuous line drawing of lamp
20. Whimsical house
21. Cactus
22. Favorite childhood toy
23. Caricature of your favorite animal
24. Musical instrument
25. Owl
26. What’s outside your window
27. Antique telephone
28. A Mask
29. Slice of pizza
30. Cowboy boots

Variations to the Daily Drawing Challenge

When starting a drawing challenge you have a couple of choices to make. Will your challenge be structured or not structured? What I mean by this is whether or not you will stick to a theme or specific medium or just draw randomly each day.

Your theme could be eyes, faces, dogs, wolves, houses, cartoons, cars, or electrical objects. There is an infinite amount of themes you could pick from.

If you pick a theme, make sure it’s something you’re not going to get bored with before the 30 days are over. After all, the purpose of the challenge is to finish it, not quit after the first week.

You could also choose to use a specific medium. Ink is a popular choice for daily drawings. But you could also use watercolor or acrylic paint for your drawings. You could use pencil, a Bic pen, colored pencils, or any other medium you want to use.

A popular choice is to use only a pen for your drawings. This means no pencil or erasing. Doing this forces you to think more critically about what you are drawing and is a great exercise for artists.

What Surface to Use

Once you’ve decide what you’re going to draw, you need to figure out what surface you want to draw on. Again, lots of choices here. You could just pick a random surface each day and not worry about what you’re drawing on. That would be perfectly fine.

You could use colored paper, Post-It notes, printer paper, canvas, or any other surface of your choosing. I like using Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) as they are small and can be traded. Being able to trade my cards after I’m done gives my practice drawings an added bit of purpose.

If you are not familiar with ATCs, check out my article on How to Make Artist Trading Cards.

30 Day Drawing Challenge Grid

Another popular alternative is to use a grid for your drawings. Each day you would fill in one of the squares. These squares will typically end up being fairly small, and therefore, will be less time consuming than drawing on a piece of paper.

Using a grid will also make it easier for you to compare your drawing skills from day to day and beginning to end.

Below is an example of a 30 day drawing grid. This was one I started in June. As you can see, I wasn’t very consistent with my drawing. I only made it 7 out of the 30 days.

You can add dates to your drawings or not. The choice is yours. In this example the squares ended up being 1.5 inches by 1.5 inches.

7 Day Drawing Challenge

If you’ve never challenged yourself to draw daily, you might want to start out with a smaller goal. Maybe give yourself a 7 day drawing challenge instead of a 30 day drawing challenge.

Or maybe do several consecutive 7 day challenges. Every 7 days you could focus on a different theme.

I know for myself, 30 days can be a pretty big commitment. There are more days of the week where I simply don’t have time than there are where I have free time. A 7 day drawing challenge can be less intimidating, so to speak.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you do not have to finish a complete drawing each day. It’s perfectly fine to work on a more complex drawing a little at a time, working on it each day. Taking a few minutes every day to do some drawing is far better than not drawing for days at a time.

Find Time to Draw

Knowing in advance when you’re going to draw would be a huge advantage. If you are on the go most of your day, having a portable sketch book might be helpful. How will drawing fit into your daily schedule?

Plan it out ahead of time so you will be more likely to complete your challenge. I don’t live in a big city, but I know a few artists who draw while on their commute each day. One artist draws portraits on subway tickets using an ink pen.

World Wide 30 Day Drawing Challenges

People all over the world participate in daily drawing challenges. Inktober is possibly the most popular and well-known challenge. During the month of October, artists from all over the world commit to doing one drawing a day for the entire month, using ink.

I’m sure there are many others out there. This just happens to be the first one that came to mind when writing this article.

Accountability

One of the biggest reasons we fail to achieve our goals is because of lack of accountability. Let’s face it, we all have days where we can’t make ourselves follow through on something. We “Fall off the Wagon”, so to speak. Maybe it’s something challenging or maybe it’s something fun that we actually enjoy doing. Either way, we all have our days where we need a little push to keep going.

Having a buddy to hold you accountable can make a huge difference in your success in following through with your goals. If you can, find a partner to do the challenge with you.

30 Day Drawing Challenge for Beginners

What will you challenge yourself to do? Will you go for the full 30 days, or do a shortened challenge? Maybe you’ll decide to go for a longer challenge. How about an entire year? It’s always good to want to push yourself to the next level. But, if you can’t stick with it, you’ll give up before you see good progress.

It’s better to keep your challenges more manageable so you can stay relaxed and enjoy it more.

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