DRAWESOME

It's a busy month with seasonal projects and challenges. The seasonal card exchange is underway, and we're extending the fanartist rec challenge across this month as well.



Art Rec Challenge: Rec a Fanartist

Pick a fanartist you like and tell us why you enjoy their works - and link us to a few examples, and to their main site or sites.

Any fandom, but only fanartists please, not professional artists (it's okay if they're fanartists who do commissions or have a buy-me-a-coffee, though, as that's fairly common these days.) They can be from any era - from early Star Trek vintage to artists posting currently.

Tell us about just one artist per post, please - you can make more than one post if you want to rec two or three artists!

A round-up post for this recs challenge will be done at the end of December. Happy reccing!

It's just after the end of October, and we'd love to have you check in and chat with us. How have things been with you since August? (having just realised we haven't had a check-in post for a while, oops, sorry!)

Did you sign up for or take part in any fandom activities in the past three months, or have you been working on any personal art projects? Are you looking at a bunch of end-of-year deadlines? Feel free to share upcoming art challenges that have got you excited, any frustrations you've been experiencing, possible goals for the next month, and so on. There's probably been a lot happening since it's been a while since we did this, so feel free just to give us the highlights!

REMINDER!! - and extra time.



A reminder about the July prompt which I only just remembered myself! As everyone's been busy, we're extending the deadline for another two weeks, to mid August.

Challenge #72: What Makes You Happy

We all need some positive vibes these days, so this month the challenge is to draw or paint anything that makes you happy, or that makes your favourite characters happy. It could be a person, a place, a garden, a cup of tea or coffee, a pet, a stack of books - anything at all!

If you're into Star Trek, Spock could be what makes Jim happy, or for Blackbeard, it might be Stede. You can draw something fannish, or something personal, as long as it makes you or your characters happy.

A round-up post for submissions to this challenge will be done on August 16th.

Challenge #71: Pride!

It's Pride throughout June in the USA and many other places, so that's our theme this month. You can draw or paint LGBTQ+ characters from canon or fandom, original characters representing some aspect of Pride, key historical LGBTQ figures, art based on the colours of the Pride flags - wherever your imagination takes you!

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about LGBTQ people and Pride.

It's fine to depict slash, femslash, poly, ace etc. relationships beloved of fandom, whether or not they're explicit in canon. Or show your favourite characters taking part in Pride activities like parades, marches, or parties - anything linked with Pride and the LGBTQ+ community.

A round-up post for submissions to this challenge will be done at the end of June.

 

A reminder about our current challenge - it runs until the end of March, so for another week or so.




Challenge 69: in Spaaace!

Create a drawing or painting with the theme of space.

That could be any aspect of space, like planets, stars, ships, astronauts or alien worlds, and it could focus on settings or characters from a space-based fandom, or be a space AU. Put your fantasy faves in space! Romance in space! A coffee shop in space! The possibilities are endless. :)

 

 

Wow, where did 2023 go? It's the new year (by some calendars), so this month's challenge is to draw or paint something that represents or symbolises either a goal or a wish that you have for 2024 - and feel free to depict several goals &/or wishes, of course! As ever, it could be a fannish goal or wish, or entirely unrelated to fandom. Whatever you like!

A round-up post for submissions to this challenge will be done in about a month.

Happy Drawing, everyone! :)
 

Goss will post soon about our annual seasonal card exchange in December, but meanwhile the Face Your Fears art challenge continues, through to early December. Here's a reminder about it:

Challenge yourself to draw, paint or practice something you tend to avoid, because you're not so confident with it. For some people that might be hands, or faces, or full-body poses, or landscapes, or backgrounds, or horses - the list is endless! It can be original work or in a fannish context. Thanks to seleneheart for suggesting this challenge. 

The idea is to tackle something you'd like to improve in your drawing or painting, and either practice it several times across the month and show us your progress (kind of like a smaller version of the 100 things challenge), or do a single artwork in which you've tackled it and tried to improve. Another way to approach this is to use the challenge to practice technical things you find tricky, like managing values (light and dark contrasts), or getting perspective right, or working in a medium that's more difficult for you.

A round-up post of submissions for this challenge will be done in December. 

Happy Drawing, Everyone! :)

Instead, we have our annual card exchange where those wanting to join in can make seasonal cards (any type, they don't have to feature a particular tradition or season) and send them to the other participants. We're posting about the card exchange early this year, as the postal systems will be slower. If you haven't already commented on mekare's post about the card exchange, then comment here to join in. If your mailing address or email has changed since last year, or if you've never done the card exchange before, message me or goss  with your email and postal address and the name you'd prefer to have on the card and envelope. We generally don't use fannish usernames for RL mail, but you can if you prefer. Once we have the list of those wanting to participate we'll email everyone the list of addresses. Please let us know by Monday Nov 16th  if you want to take part in the card exchange, but you can of course get started making cards, meanwhile! 

This period will also be an amnesty, which means you can post new works or finish WIPs for any of the past drawesome  challenges. The challenge list is here!

Thanks to everyone for coming up with all the great prompts! I've collated them into our Drawtober prompts list for the October challenge - this is a preview so you can start thinking up ideas or preparing, if you want to. Lots of you suggested prompts so it worked out to 2-3 prompts being used per contributor. Where possible I've included prompts with several possible meanings or interpretations, rather than those that were very specific like "cats with lasers" (much as I love that one!)

This isn't the start of the challenge so don't start posting art based on the prompts to the comm yet - it's to announce the prompts list in advance. goss will do a post on October 1st to kick off our Drawtober challenge officially.
 

Happy planning!