Wolf Criers Club
Vol 28
Who are you running with this year?
Birds that migrate fly in that V shape to cover longer distances than they would alone.
Fish school together to confuse the bigger fish trying to eat them.
Wolves run with a pack to protect each other and raise their cubs.
Want to run with The Wolf Criers in March?
One way to sharpen your artistic senses is to move through a challenge with others. It helps build confidence, skills, and connections.
Wolf Crier Kayleen Sokol tries out art challenges throughout the year. In fact, she is taking the lead designing a challenge for Wolf Criers friends and fans in March. More details will be revealed in the upcoming weeks in this newsletter and on social media.
For now, Kayleen has put together some thoughts about a calendar of online arts challenges that you and your arts-buds can explore.
All of the images included here are by Kayleen created as a result of participating in various challenges.
What & Why of Art Challenges
Art challenges are where the art community is invited to create something together. The challenge could be focused on practicing in a specific medium like ink drawing or watercolor painting, or it could be subject-based like designing characters or book covers. It’s a chance to challenge your creative muscles, to draw something for fun when you don’t know what to draw, or maybe even get you out of an art block slump. For some artists, there have been times where participating in popular annual art challenges helped them get discovered.
When artists are all working on the same projects, it can help you have accountability to keep going when it gets challenging. Making something frequently, especially the challenges that go for 31 days, can help you get started on developing a daily drawing routine if that is something you want to do. Even if you don’t post 31 art pieces though, it’s still rewarding to see the drawings you’ve made in a short period of time. That’s what it did for me.
I’ve been terrible at finishing and sharing new art consistently. I was usually trying to do other projects at the same time as the challenges. I’ve learned from my mistakes and I intend to do better on setting realistic goals that aren’t too high of expectations. I’m personally excited to make art for one particular challenge coming in March.
There’s a whole year's worth to choose from, but what and when are they? Don’t worry, I did the research for you. Many art challenges that will happen this year are listed below. Comment below if there’s one I left out or if there’s one you’ve never heard before and are excited to learn about.
A Selection of Art Challenges in 2025
January:
Doodlewash- (ongoing for the whole year) Every month there is a daily prompt primarily focused on traditional mediums of art like watercolor painting, drawing, or both. (They are also associated with a watercolor challenge in the month of July known as “World Watercolor Month.”). Instagram
SCBWI Draw This! - The Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators have a monthly art prompt. If you are a member you can submit for the contest where the top two winners will have their art featured in various platforms.
March:
Wolf Criers Art Week- Hosted by the Wolf Criers Club*, 2025 will be the inaugural year of our own art challenge. We will have a themed prompt list for 7 days in March. This year it will start on March 17th and the prompt theme will be Irish Folklore. The prompt list will be shared soon so stay tuned!
May:
MerMay - Tom Bancroft, a Disney Animation Veteran on Instagram, is the founder of this art challenge, daily mermaid prompts for the month of May. This challenge is made for any medium of art including animation. Instagram
June:
Junicorn - I couldn’t find the founder or main host for this challenge, but several artists often make their own prompt lists for artists to use and the main challenge is to draw a unicorn creature for every day of June.July:
Art Fight - An annual art game with themed character design creation where artists are randomly assigned to two teams and compete in “fighting matches”.
World Watercolor Month - A global charitable event founded by Doodlewash, the challenge is to make watercolor paintings every day in July. Prompt List
August:
Smaugust - the challenge to draw a dragon every day in August. Some artists make their own prompt lists for people to participate in.
October
SCBWI Artober - A month long, 31 day art challenge with prompts created by the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators.
Inktober - Jake Parker is the founder of the challenge, hosted on Instagram. There is also Inktober52 if you wish to continue the prompts on a weekly basis every week of the year. Every day of the challenge they share a few of the submissions for each prompt. Instagram Substack
OCtober - “Original Character October” is a challenge that was originally started on Deviantart by @Northairn. This is popular with the artists who love to design characters and draw them over and over. It could be good for making a comic or kidlit sequential art project.
November:
Huevember - The founder is Matthieu Daures. He hasn’t been active on social media for some years now as far as I can tell, but many artists still participate in it with a color wheel chart divided into one color for each day.
Glowvember - Hosted by Katie Croonenberghs, also known as @kamakru. She relocated her social media account from Instagram to Cara. The prompts revolve around “glow” in the month of November. Could be a fun way to focus on color values and lighting in a project.
Website:
Folktale Week -The founder is Debra Styer. It is a week-long art challenge that follows several prompts to create an illustrated story.December:
The Imagined Book Cover - founded by Monty Lee also known as @mosokje. It is an art week with seven prompts of made-up stories for artists to do cover designs. It can be just for fun or it could even be used for portfolio pieces.
Kayleen Sokol & Kato McNickle composed this week’s newsletter.
Illustration contributions from art challenges by Kayleen Sokol.
Wolf Criers Club is a collective of illustrators, writers, innovators, and wolves. We explore aspects of dynamic storytelling each week through pictures and words, how to improve, and where to take it next. Why not run with us?
If you enjoy this post, please share it with arts-minded friends and subscribe or follow Wolf Criers Club on Substack for weekly updates.
The wolf-wearing-glasses logo is by Wolf Crier Michael Luk.
This is awesome! Can't wait to try some (many!) of these 😀
Dude this awesome list!!