Completing a Daily Sketching Challenge and How I Approach It

Every January I try and take part in a daily sketching challenge. I say try, I rarely manage every day, but I try my best! There are lots of them on social media throughout the year, the usual format is you get a prompt list either daily or at the start of the challenge. Sometimes there’s a theme and sometimes it’s a specific medium, such as watercolour or ink.

A spread from last year's daily sketching challenge - quite an eclectic mix

Now I LOVE sketchbooks, although I have yet to find the perfect one, but that’s a topic for another day. Many artists champion the use of sketchbooks to create messy art, to experiment, try different media, to develop ideas, which are all great uses for a sketchbook. However there’s often a lot of advise suggesting you shouldn’t have a “nice” sketchbook, where you do more complete work, that this creates too much pressure to create the “perfect” image on every page. Whilst I totally get this, to me there’s room for both! I spent years at art college being told to “loosen up”, but if you know my work, that’s just not me, I enjoy the detail!

My most liked sketch on Instagram on my 2024 sketching challenge was of a spoon!

This year I’m carrying on with last year’s sketchbook, at the time I had great intentions of carrying on with it, but as soon as I got my coloured pencils out, the sketchbook went away. My 2024 challenge to myself was to do all the drawings from life (from an object placed in front of me) and using fineliners. As someone who does realistic coloured pencil drawings, I mostly work from reference photos. Working from life is great practice as you’re working from three dimensional objects, and it teaches you to really look at the form and light and think about how you represent that on the page using only lines! This approach also gives me the challenge of interpreting the prompt so I can create my drawing for objects I have round the house, which often requires some creative thinking! To my eyes, my sketches are far from perfect, but I embrace the wonkiness and enjoy creating something different to my usual coloured pencil art.

The prompt was "Bubbles", the date was January 1st, so this seemed like an appropriate sketch!

To follow my progress with this year’s daily sketching challenge, please follow me on Instagram