I started 31days of the mini watercolor art challenge in December 2020 and in this post, I am going to share my experience and why I want you to start an art challenge as well by telling you the benefits of it. I will also share some tips so that it is easy for you to do it and you don’t repeat the mistakes I did.
If you want to watch a video on this blog, you can watch it on my YouTube channel. Sometimes I like watching videos rather than reading the whole thing, so I made a video as well.
Why did I start an art challenge?
I started my art journey in January 2020 as a full-time artist. It was wonderful in the beginning. I used to paint regularly and naturally, had the motivation to create something every day because it was the beginning but as the day passed and life went ahead, I found it difficult to get the motivation to paint regularly.
It is fine not to paint every day but I had a whole month where I couldn’t paint and that made me feel very bad because I decided to become an artist and I was not painting. It was frustrating. I decided to paint something every day but I didn’t know where to start.
How did I start this art challenge?
I decided to start a challenge for a month and I have saved so many classes on my Skillshare profile. I have a Skillshare subscription and I decided to utilize it and join a class every day for the next 31 days. While browsing through all the classes, I saw a class by Trupti Karjinni about the same thing. She has a class about the painting challenge and I attended it to prepare myself for the 31 days of the mini watercolor painting challenge. Let me say you, it was amazing. I am so happy that I attended that class.
While painting every day for this challenge, I also posted every day on social media and blog every day. It helped me to learn to schedule social media posts and blog posts. I posted a blog every day on my medium page as well. I felt like I was doing everything in harmony and I am going to tell you why you should start it, too. If you are stuck somewhere and not able to paint, this challenge will help you for sure.
I started it for 31 days but if it is too much for you, you can do it for 7 days or 15 days, or 20. It’s totally up to you. I chose watercolors because I am most comfortable with them but you can choose your favorite medium. In this challenge, I painted some originals, some from Skillshare classes and some from painting references from Unsplash and Instagram.
Benefits of starting an art challenge
1) Regular painting practice
2) Improve painting skills
3) You will get to know your medium better
4) Know yourself more as an artist
5) You will have something to post every day
6) Connect with more people
1) Regular painting practice
This challenge is all about painting every day. This challenge is not about making a masterpiece every day but painting something on a blank canvas. Practicing a painting every day can make you a better artist and you know that, right?
2) Improve painting skills
As you will paint something every day, you will get better at it as I said in the previous point. You will learn new techniques and methods and will learn something you never knew. Maybe painting a tree was difficult for you before starting this challenge, and after completing it, you will be the master of painting trees.
3) You will get to know your medium better
If you are a beginner or intermediate level artist, by starting this challenge, you will know your medium better whether you have decided to choose watercolors, acrylic or gauche. In the beginning, you may not know how much water you should add to your watercolors to paint certain things. Maybe you are painting with a very watery mixture so you are not getting a better final result.
By starting this challenge, you will learn and observe your medium very closely so that you will realize what you were doing wrong or what you can do better.
4) Know yourself more as an artist
When I started my journey as an artist, I thought I only enjoy painting florals but as I went ahead, to my surprise I enjoyed myself painting landscapes more than flowers. It was very surprising for me because I was afraid of painting on the whole paper. I was afraid to cover full paper with paint. When I started this challenge, I had not decided on the theme of the challenge but unintentionally I kept painting landscapes. I also discovered that I like to paint more in the nighttime than daytime. Another thing I discovered as an artist is I can also work on two paintings at the same time.
As I discovered these things while working on a painting challenge, I am sure you will get to know yourself more as an artist.
5) You will have something to post every day
If you are someone who wants to post every day on your social media or YouTube channel or on your blog, by starting this challenge, you will have content to post every day. You can post photos, work in progress videos, timelapse videos, and blogs.
6) Connect with more people
As you will post every day on your social media, more people will start to get connecting with you. I started posting on my Instagram and Facebook page every day. People started following me and started commenting if they like my paintings. As I am writing this today, I got a customer who bought three paintings.
Drawbacks of starting a challenge
1) Feeling overwhelmed
There will be a few days when you will feel overwhelmed by this challenge. Someday maybe the painting will not turn out the way you want or you want to paint something but you are not finding any perfect reference pictures. Someday maybe you will caught up in other work and you could not paint.
I felt overwhelmed when I had to visit my parents for a few days and I had to paint, plan and schedule the social media posts and write blogs altogether.
Starting any challenge can be difficult but by planning it well, you can do anything you want, right? So I am going to share some tips with you so that you will find it somewhat easy to start it.
Tips
1) Don’t push yourself too much
2) Commit publicly so you feel responsible
3) Prepare everything at your painting desk before starting
4) Paint one or two paintings in advance
5) Use medium you are familiar with
6) Download reference pictures in advance
1) Don’t push yourself too much
Know your limits before you start any challenge. Start with 7 days challenge if you think 31 days are too much for you. It is totally fine if you can’t paint in-between or were not able to complete the challenge. You can start over another one whenever you want.
2) Commit publicly so you feel responsible
If you find it difficult to commit yourself to paint every day, I suggest you commit this to your social media followers, so you will feel responsible to paint every day and share your daily paintings with them. This will be your external push to reach the finish line.
3) Prepare everything at your painting desk before starting
Keep things you will need to paint on your painting desk before sitting to start painting. This way, you will have everything you will need right on the desk so you don’t have to get up every now and then to get things. By preparing your desk, you will get in the zone and feel motivated to paint. Please remember that we are not starting this challenge to create a masterpiece every day. It is okay to mess up.
4) Paint one or two paintings in advance
Not every day will be the same. Some day you will have to go somewhere or you will have some more priority work to get done. In this case, it will be best if you have one or two paintings in advance so if you are posting a painting every day on your social media, you will have something in advance to cover up.
5) Use medium you are familiar with
It will be easier for you if you start this challenge with the medium you already know. You don’t need to know the medium very closely because that you will do throughout this challenge. If you know the medium already, you will not get frustrated or spend more time just learning the medium.
6) Download the reference pictures in advanced
This is a very important tip. If you start searching for a reference when you will sit to paint, you will spend a lot of time just searching for the perfect reference photo And you may lose the motivation to paint. To stop letting that happen to you, please search for the reference photos in advance and save them on your device, so you just have to go through those selected photos and not from the thousands of photos on the internet.
I use Unsplash for reference photos and if I like something on Instagram, I ask the account holder for their permission to paint the photo.
Conclusion
Starting any challenge can be overwhelming or confusing but if you plan things in advance and prepare, you will find it easier to complete the challenge. I felt very proud of myself when I completed this challenge. I feel very happy when I see all of those tiny 31 paintings I painted throughout this challenge. I will also advise you to join the amazing class by Trupti Karjinni on Skillshare. To get the free one month trial on Skillshare, please click this link - https://skl.sh/3qGQrsi
If you want to start a challenge like this and need any help, you can send a message to me at helinaik@yahoo.com or you can reach out to me on my Instagram account.
Thank you so much for stopping by.
Love,
heli