Annual Diary of Art Challenges

Most of you will probably have heard of Inktober, but did you know that there’s also a Huevember and a Drawcember? What am I saying… I’ll bet most of you have, and I’m just the dinosaur in the room. What all of these have in common is that they provide lists of daily activities for the artist to indulge themselves in, based on a theme provided by whoever creates the list. You can probably guess from their names what the challenges are; for example, Huevember is all about drawing or painting something every day throughout the month of November, with a particularly dominant hue assigned to each of those days.

Inktober, an annual activity enjoyed by many thousands of artists across the globe, looking for ink-based inspiration and motivation, was created by Jake Parker in 2009. In 2019, Jake Parker copyrighted it, to reinforce his claim on it as its inventor and protect his intellectual property, sparking something of a controversy and dividing the art community as a result. As a consequence, there are now many who flatly refuse to participate in the activity at all.

It would seem Jake Parker is no stranger to controversy. In 2020 he published a book called ‘Inktober – All Year Long’, and was publicly accused of plagiarism by Alphonso Dunn, who had written and published a book – ‘Pen and Ink Drawing; A Simple Guide’ – featuring what looked suspiciously like identical content, some years before. This also divided people in spectacular fashion, and raised several questions as to whether or not basic ideas of teaching a subject (in this case, ink drawing) can actually be attributed to a single person. After all; the teachings of art techniques have been around for centuries, and some degree of emulation or repetition, is surely inevitable when you look closely at how many books are arranged.

That particular controversy aside (as I wouldn’t wish to open any cans of worms), I recently stumbled across both of these stories quite by accident, while researching potential ideas for similar monthly challenges/activities, a feature I’ve been considering adding to my own online tuition service. I knew of Inktober, but didn’t realise it had been copyrighted, and was blissfully unaware of Huevember and Drawcember. In fact, after further research, it turns out there are challenges for every month… here’s the full list as far as I can tell – how many of them have you heard of?… More importantly, how many of them do you participate in?…

January
Creaturanuary – Draw a creature every month

February
Fairyary – One fairy per day
Febirdary – A bird a day… I see what they did there…

March
Magical March – Something magical every day
March of Robots – Illustrate a different robot every day of the month
Monster March – As above, but with monsters

April
April Showers – Anything related to rain and storm, rendered on a daily basis

May
Merday – er… Mermaids, of course…
Munchy May – A daily food drawing challenge

June
Junicorn – That’ll be daily unicorns, then
Junebug – Insects, naturally
JuneFae – Fairys (again)… brownies and hobgoblins allowed also

July
Julycanthropy – A great name! Daily wolves or werewolves

August
Smaugust – A whole month dedicated to drawing daily dragons
Doggust – Draw a different dog each day

September
Sketchtember – self-explanatory, I think

October
Inktober – Worldwide and nationally known, but oddly controversial, ink-based daily scribblings
Drawlloween – Halloween-inspired daily challenge
Drawtober – Another Halloween-based thing
Goretober – Release the gore…
Catober – Cats and other feline animals
Foxtober – I’ll let you guess…

November
Huevember – One drawing per day linked to a certain hue
Slowvember – Take your time and produce one really really good piece of work in the month (really…)

December
Drawcember – Mostly Christmas-related
Decembird – Daily bird-related art
Dinovember – A dinosaur a day keeps extinction at bay…

I should add that the organisers of all these activities provide fresh prompt lists each year, to help refine your daily output. From a list as expansive as this, it would seem there really is no day in the year left uncatered-for. It does raise the question, though – in my mind at least – how unmotivated, or lacking in inspiration would you have to be to indulge in all of these? Answers on one postcard per day, please…