Hello! There are various art challenges and ideas that exist, here I will list the ones I personally know!
Greyscale Art Challenge – in settings set your device’s visual display to greyscale and draw as normal. Well, as normal as you can, since your display will be in greyscale, you won’t really know what colors you are using until after you turn the greyscale filter off. Unless you have where all the colors in your art program are on the color picker system memorized, you won’t really know what colors you’re using.
DTIYS – In a DTIYS or Draw This In Your Style, you redraw something in your own style. Usually it’s someone else’s drawing, that you simply redraw in your own style. Sometimes it can be other things like a screenshot from something.
Pause OC Challenge – These sorts of challenges are popular on YouTube and TikTok, where multiple options are switched between, for different details, and you have to pause to select one. Screenshot it if you’d like. This goes on for multiple details, and you end up with the basis for an OC design. It is up to you, if this basis is actually turned into an OC.
Draw by Description – You are given a vague description, this can be of a character or anything really, and you attempt to draw it, by the vague description. Sometimes the drawing will turn out like what was being described, and other times it will not. Typically this challenge is done with fictional characters.
Drawing for a Specific Amount of Time – These challenges take a while. Typically time-based challenges that involve doing something for a specific amount of time, often 24 hours are more. I advise being careful, if you are to do a challenge of this sort, as you should make sure you don’t ruin your sleep schedule if you go for 24 hours straight. I advise not doing it 24 hours straight, and offer breaks for sleeping. Though, doing that somewhat takes away the challenge factor, doesn’t it? Still, your health is important. Be careful, if you do this sort of challenge.
Monthly Art Challenge – A challenge where you do a drawing each day, typically with a specific theme, within a month. A couple examples I can think of are is Inktober and Mermay. There are others like Smaugust, a dragon-themed one, and Huevember, one that involves using a different hue each day. The titles seem to be wordplay based off of a specific month, Ink and October for Inktober, Mermaid and May for Mermay, Smaug and August for Smaugust, Hue and November for Huevember and so on. Some have rules, such as Inktober has a prompt word for each day, while others like Smaugust are usually more open, you just have to draw a dragon each day. There is also Doggust, which is similar to Smaugust, except instead of dragons, dogs are drawn. There is even a dinosaur one called Dinovember, which is in November. Inktober is typically done with ink pens, however the FAQ from the Inktober website mention digital and other non-ink mediums are fine as long as its in black and white (so, it resembles an ink drawing). According to the same FAQ, on September 1st, this year’s prompt list will be released. Some people follow prompts that they or others create for the drawing months that don’t typically have prompts, if they want to follow a plan. I have attempted to do a monthly art challenge before, however I was unable to finish because I developed art block. I tried! Maybe I’ll try to do Inktober this year, with a digital art twist?
Overcomplicating a Design Intentionally – This is interesting. I saw a LavenderTowne video about this where she overcomplicated Garfield. At first it looked like Garfield was just a little fluffier and wearing eyeliner, then he looked like a punk, then things got weird and silly when he started to look like a magical girl. A magical girl is a sort of superhero seen in anime. Think of the aesthetic of a princess mixed with magical superpowers. That’s essentially what a magical girl is. She started with the base character design, and added 20% detail, then 50% then 77% then 125%. The specific numbers didn’t mean anything.
Here is LavenderTowne’s video.
Simplifying a Design – The inverse of the previous one. Simplify a design to what you want to be recognizable, if you’re drawing your own OC. If drawing a fictional character, keep what you think is the most recognizable features from the design.
Design a Character based Off of Something Specific – Design a Character based off of something specific, like an object, a concept, an affliction, item, or even something more broad like an aesthetic, color palette, subject, theme, etc.
(Lavendertowne has done this many times before, so check out this playlist for ideas!)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhmHswx9NVfVez9TIKJyaWFzIiNAA3lWp
Animal Skull Reconstruction – Find a skull of an animal online (it can be any animal), and pretend you have no idea what the animal the skull is from looks like. Try to reconstruct it, and draw what it could look like, based off of the skull alone. There are various memes that exist about “how aliens would reconstruct the animal”, that makes fun of the idea that animal skulls don’t always resemble what species they come from, as a lot of detail comes from fat, fur, blubber, or feathers. This additional detail is lost, when all that is present is bones.
With actual forensic reconstruction with people, more detail is considered such as DNA, to determine specific details about the appearance of who the remains belonged to. DNA is typically taken from remains, and is tested to determine details about who the remains belonged to, so visual reconstructions can be as accurate as possible, and the person can hopefully be identified. With these artistic animal reconstructions, they’re less serious and more of an art challenge in comparison to a real-world reconstruction.
Three color challenge – Use three randomly selected colors, when coloring your artwork. There are variations of this like 1 color challenge, 10 color challenge, and so on.
Here’s a random color code generator with hex codes provided. https://www.random.org/colors/hex
I actually used that website to generate three random colors, that I used within the featured image. The greens and the magenta were randomly generated by the site.
Non-Dominant Hand Challenge – Draw with your non-dominant hand. If you are left-handed draw with your right hand for the challenge, and if you are right-handed, draw with your left hand.
Inverted Color Challenge – Draw with inverted colors, in a way where if you take a photo of the drawing and invert the colors, the colors will be what you actually wanted them to be.
No Undo – You have to make sure you’re doing every stroke properly, as with this challenge, you can’t undo. Think of it like you were inking a drawing, you cant undo if you mess up badly.
There are likely other art challenges out there, these are just the ones I personally know of. I hope you have fun with them!