October Challenges and Art Prompts

It's October - a bumper month for art challenges! 

There are so many to great ones to sign up for, like Jake Parker's #Inktober or Victoria Johnson's #birdsbutterfliesandblooms, but unfortunately daily art challenges just don't work for me right now - thanks to work and home life it can be difficult to fit in enough time to produce work I'm proud of (no-one wants to see a month's worth of terrible art)! So I start missing days pretty quickly, and I soon get discouraged.

It turns out I'm not the only one! This year, Anne Bollman of Anne Was Here has started a new weekly October Challenge because as she says 'for me personally, pushing out an illustration a day is not only stressful but also doesn’t result in my best work. Once a week allows me the time to do my best while also making room for client deadlines.' Now that sounds familiar! Her challenge is #kidlitartober and it's great!

I love the idea of this one, and the prompts she's devised have really got my brain going, but as I'm not quite at the stage of children's book illustration just yet, I thought I'd have a go at it with a bit of a twist... and create patterns instead!

I'll be using the prompts to create kid-focused patterns instead of book pages, scenes, or single illustrations with the aim of having a few Halloween themed patterns up my sleeve by the end of the month. I shan't be putting everything I do on Instagram though (and won't set up a new hashtag), as I've decided it's time to start hiding illustrations away for the beginnings of a little mini-portfolio, but I'll sneak a few on there throughout the month, so do follow me there to see how it goes. At the end of the month I'll check back in here to recap how it's gone.

So just to get things started, here's a mini-collection I posted for the first prompt 'Skeleton Pyjamas' - One hero print with 5 coordinates.  

Check out Anne's #kidlitartober hashtag and keep coming back - it's only week one so there's not much there yet, but it's great to see what everyone else is coming up with!⁠ Need a challenge? Join in yourself! 

And thanks to Anne for starting the challenge!