What are your favorite Instagram art challenges?

cianamacaroni

Hey people,

I'm trying to engage more actively with the community of kidlit artists on social media and would like to participate in more illustration prompts. What are your favorite Instagram art challenges/prompts?

Here are the ones I know of:

Critique Arena monthly prompts
Friday Doodle Club prompts
SCBWI Draw This! (Not super active)
Transmundane Tuesdays

Know of any others?

Thanks!

Ciana

Pamela Fraley

@cianamacaroni
There’s always quite a few “draw this in your style challenges” I think the tag is “dtiys” and “sixfanarts” is another one. ️

LauraA

@cianamacaroni Are you looking for weekly prompts or events in which you draw every day, like Inktober?

Here are a few more popular ones I have heard of:

Folktale week
Childhood week (twice a year)
Advent challenge or illo advent (I think they are the same, but don't know what the official name of the event is)

And then there are monthlong challenges such as:

Inktober (Jake)
Mermay
Slowvember (Lee)

There are also a ton of lesser known events that I have come across, but don't know how active they are now. Some of them are:

Hourly Comics Day (Feb.)
Magic Movie Week (March, April?)
Monochrome month, Dream Week (April)
Dream Journey, Bon Voyage week (May)
Potter Week Prompts (July)
Hello Autumn week (September)
Peachtober, Vistober
Narnia November
Magic movie month and Festivity Week in December

There are sites that put out a color palette and you create something using that palette (Coolors.co has one, among others).

There are lots of #dtiys (draw this in your style) challenges, if you want to do something quick and don't want to come up with subject matter all the time.

There are face your art and art vs. artist, that happen at the end of every year and may pop up randomly now and then.

There's the hashtag #drawthisagain, which is, I think, when you redo and old piece.

There are even prompts that prop up occasionally such as one in which you draw what you're wearing right now.

And though it's not a prompt, there's #kidlitartpostcard, which is mostly on Twitter and occurs I think every other month as a substitute for paper postcards to agents and art directors.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg! I would suggest following some of the more challenge active illustrators and these will just start of pop up on your Instagram. Whenever I see one, I save the post and then scroll through them later when I am looking for one to consider.

I hope other people will post theirs as well! That way, whenever we have a free moment, we have plenty to choose from!

cianamacaroni

@lauraa Amazing! Thanks so much, I haven't heard of some of these. And I guess I'm interested in both monthly challenges and smaller one-off prompts.