Have you ever started an art challenge with the best intentions, only to discover halfway through that life had other plans?
Maybe you signed up for Inktober, a daily sketching challenge, or a month of painting. You were excited, you had your supplies ready, and you had every intention of finishing.
And then you didn’t.
I’ve been thinking about that lately, especially now that October’s art challenges are behind us. We hear plenty about the satisfaction of completing a challenge, but not nearly enough about what we gain from participating, whether we finish or not.
I’ve come to believe that an unfinished art challenge isn’t necessarily an unsuccessful one.
Think about what happens when you participate. You try something different. You experiment with materials or subjects you might otherwise have overlooked. Perhaps you discover a technique you enjoy, or something you want to learn more about. You may even discover that a particular kind of art simply isn’t for you.
That’s valuable information!
Sometimes we get so caught up in counting the days we’ve completed that we forget to notice what we’ve learned along the way.
And there’s another consideration. Art challenges are supposed to encourage creativity, but sometimes they do exactly the opposite. When the pressure to produce something every day becomes more important than enjoying the process, we risk turning something we love into another obligation.
I don’t believe creativity should be measured solely by how faithfully we follow someone else’s schedule.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t challenge ourselves. Challenges can help us develop discipline, explore new ideas, and build confidence. But I also think there’s a difference between challenging ourselves and punishing ourselves for falling short of an arbitrary goal.
Perhaps you completed ten drawings instead of thirty-one. Those are ten drawings you might never have made otherwise. Maybe one of them introduced you to an entirely new direction in your artwork.
Was that really a failure?
In my earlier article, The Art of Sticking With an Art Challenge, I shared some ideas for keeping your enthusiasm alive while participating in a challenge. This time, I wanted to consider the other side of the experience: what happens when you don’t finish, and why that doesn’t erase what you accomplished.
I’ve also made a video about art challenges and the importance of enjoying the creative process. You can watch it below.
Watch my new video about this here:
As we look ahead to future art challenges, I hope we’ll remember that completing every prompt isn’t the only reason to participate.
Sometimes the greatest reward is simply discovering that there’s more creativity in us than we realized.
And sometimes, the artwork we didn’t plan to make turns out to be the most interesting of all.
