Creative Challenges
If you don’t challenge yourself, you will never realize what you can become.
If you are feeling a pull to try something new or to re-establish your creative practice, a creative challenge may be the perfect solution. I resisted taking on challenges for a few years. I thought they would box me in or make my art practice unspontaneous. I have learned that neither of those are true and, in fact, creative challenges have help me expand my art knowledge in areas I would have never explored on my own.
About four years ago I signed up for the Index Card A Day (ICAD) challenge. At the time I didn’t have a regular creative practice, I was just trying to squeeze it in whenever I could. I thought this challenge would be great because an index card is small. I could easily do that each day, right? That was the year that I learned no magic happens when you sign up for a challenge. I completed about 10 days in a month and gave up. Next I tried the 100 Day Challenge with a very similar result. I started to think that challenges just weren’t my thing.
I stopped trying challenges for awhile, but kept feeling the pull to try again. One day I decided to write down notes about the challenges….what I liked, what hadn’t worked, what I wanted to try. Through this I found out several things that were hindering my efforts. First I realized that many times I was taking on a much larger challenge than I could accomplish. For example, I would set my goal as an art journal page every day. I would also set me goal as something too broad, like “paint every day”. I started to narrow down what I thought I could really accomplish every day. Then I looked at what I wanted to try more of.
As I finished all of that exploring, the 100 Day Project was about to start again. I had decided to use a very small journal (about the size of an index card) and to focus mostly on collage. I gathered my little paper scraps and placed then in a box. I added a small paper of scissors, a glue stick and a Moleskine sketch book to the box. That was my challenge kit. I decided that I could only use things in that box. One hundred days later I had a chunky collage journal that I loved to look through.
Why did this work for me? It worked because I set parameters that allowed me to be successful. I limited the size of my project and I limited the supplies I could use. I never set an official time limit, but I tried to work as quickly as possible., not letting myself overthink things. This challenge has now become a regular part of my creative practice. I use the same size book and collage box as my warm-up many days that I am in the studio. I have lost track of how many days I have completed, but I am on my third Moleskine book. (To check out a page from this journal, click here)
Adding a creative challenge can help you explore or finetune your art practice. My challenge led me to explore collage further. Before this I had always used collage as part of my underlayer, not a focal point. So adding this little challenge has broadened my art practice. I have yet another tool in my toolbox.
Are you ready for a creative challenge? Here are some to try….
The 100 Day Project starts again on January 31, 2021. Still one of my favorite challenges because you set your own guidelines. This can be anything you want to do for 100 days.
The Index Card a Day challenge usually starts in June, but there is nothing saying you can’t start you own challenge now.
This year I will be hosting a monthly art journaling challenge in my Patreon group. The challenge will include a monthly prompt, photos and a video of my pages related to the prompt and a place to share your pages with the rest of the Arty Gang.
Have you taken on a creative challenge? What worked for you and what did you learn?