024 - How Creatives Benefit From Participating in Art Challenges
Topics Discussed and Key Points
•Benefits of doing an art challenge
•How to find an art challenge
•How to gain the most from participating in an art challenge
Participating in an art challenge will help you grow as a creative, not to mention they are fun and inspiring. If you haven’t joined in on an art challenge yet, here are some benefits that will surely get you excited about jumping into one!
Benefits of doing an Art Challenge
It helps you develop a creative habit: Our lives are complicated, and before you know it, time goes by and you find that you haven’t been in your studio in weeks. By participating in an art challenge, you will find yourself working on something each day, which will help you develop a creative habit. Consistency is key!
It helps boost your inspiration: When you are participating in a challenge, and you search the hashtag that has been assigned by the creator of the challenge, and you see that grid of all that color and all those different responses to a single prompt… inspiration begin. You get wildly inspired, and you want to try different things that you have not tried before!
It helps you gain new friends or a new community: The most popular art challenges usually take place on Instagram, making them easy to participate in and easily searchable. You’ll quickly find yourself making new friends and building your community. You never know, your best friend might be just a like or a comment away.
It helps you stretch creatively depending on what the challenge is about: Committing to a challenge for a particular period helps you stretch your ability to commit and be disciplined. Art challenges vary in length from as many as 100 days to as few as seven days. When you join a challenge that is outside your comfort zone or focuses on a topic new to you, it will help you stretch your creative muscles.
How to find an art Challenge
Finding the right challenge for you on Instagram can be a bit of a, well, challenge! Here are some pointers to help you on your search.
Annual repeaters: Some challenges happen annually, and mostly the hashtag does not change unless in cases where the challenge creator adds the year. Examples of yearly art challenges include; The 100 Day Project, which usually starts in early April; March Meet the Maker and Inktober.
Go through your Instagram feed: Your Instagram feed can be an excellent place to find and art challenge. Many challenge hosts will create a graphic that shares the theme for each day and other details. A quick tip to keep track of these when you find them is to save them to your collections on Instagram, making them easy to access later.
Ask your followers: This is the easiest way to find a challenge. Just ask your followers what challenges they like and recommend. People are always willing to share information.
Related Post —> Reflections on a Daily Creative Practice
How to Gain the Most from Participating in an Art Challenge
Just join in and have fun.
Make sure you use the challenge hashtag every time you are publishing a post.
To encourage engagement, leave comments on challenge posts from other participants.
Boost the confidence of those you can see are beginners by leaving thoughtful comments on their posts.
Share the challenge with your followers and be sure to express your thanks to the challenge host(s).
Additional Notes:
If a challenge prompt doesn’t resonate with you then change it. Be creative. Don’t stay stuck. Do something that suits you.
Challenges are not timed, and they are not tracked. You can always start them when you are ready and work through them on your schedule.
When you join a challenge, you can either start from the first prompt or jump in where everyone else is and move forward.
Resources mentioned:
The 100 Day Project
March Meet the Maker
Inktober
CaptureYour365 Photo Challenge
21 Days in My Art World
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