Hello all! I figured I would start a blog to let you guys in on a little more of the behind-the-scenes details of my first art business and my art journey in general (and to document this for myself too)!

This month we are going to talk about my experience with #Mysticalwitchtober2023 (one of the many 31 day challenges that were hosted this year on Instagram in the month of October.)

The key to any prompt list challenge - especially for this long - is to set some loose ground rules. Ones that aren't too strict, but allow for some guidance. 

For this one, I allowed myself to use any medium and it didn't have to be a finished illustration, but I had to produce something every single day and eventually post it.

I'll spare you some time in reading this though. I didn't finish it. I got so close, but the last week I hit a bit of a rough patch in my personal life (due to some stressors from my full time job) and a bit of stress when it came to preparing for my markets in the first 2 weeks in November. ** If you're in Charlotte, NC on 11/12 come out and see me @burial brewing from 1pm-6pm btw :) **

I did however, complete 28 consecutive days of illustrating. And while not all of them are great, I did gain something very important. So I'll go more in depth in the pros and cons here :)

Pros

While carving out time to draw everyday was a little hard, I was able to mostly do it for quite some time. I limited myself to 1-2 hrs a day at most and allowed myself to only have 15 min to start. If I didn't want to keep illustrating after 15 min, I allowed myself to stop. Most of the time though, I wanted to keep going. And had to keep a timer to let me know when 2 hrs was up (and even squeezed in extra time on pieces I really enjoyed). 

While I'm not saying drawing something everyday is great for everyone -- I am saying that the feeling was awesome for me. As someone that suffers from perfectionism quite a lot, it can make my art practice seem daunting sometimes. Drawing everyday kind of eliminated that for me. It got me into the swing of just sketching in my sketchbook or tablet, without worry. Because this wasn't a precious finished piece that I felt I had to make awesome due to limited time. I did this everyday after all.

Another thing that I noticed is that the prompts gave me creative ideas that even if I didn't finish them, I've got lovely ideas that I definitely want to revisit at a later date, that I may have never thought of before.

 And all of them are sitting on my tablet or sketchbook, ready to pick up where I left them off. (And since I posted them on IG, it will be interesting to show you guys how they've evolved).

Another thing is that some of the illustrations came out great. And they showed me something about rendering on my tablet that I believe is getting closer to my style everyday. 

The only way to get better is to practice right? And I was practicing every day, with no fear. I felt free to try things and experiement. And I felt like my art practice was finally on a right track.

Cons

Now, some cons. 

Which every long term challenge or project on a strict deadline, there will be cons. 

For one, drawing everyday means, drawing everyday. Halfway through the challenge, I did feel tired, and unsure on what to do for prompts sometimes. But I pushed through for the most part. I think allowing myself a ton of freedom when it came to mediums and not making everything a finished pristine illustration helped a lot here. But I did ultimately falter at the end. (which is ok! I allowed myself some grace because let's face it, life happens). 

The only other con I could really think of is that yes, not all of the drawings turned out great. And I just posted them to get them up. And I may never go back to them!

And that's OK. Social media portrays only the good parts of someone's life. And that's an important thing to remember. (And a little reason why I posted things regardless of how they looked. I want to show that not everything is gold. *Especially on Instagram*)

Final Thoughts

So here's some of my final thoughts.

Would I do this again?

Absolutely! They may all be only sketches (maybe I'll stick to just black and white or something next time), but the practice of making it a daily habit was well worth the cons.

I might schedule out all of October just for this next time. Doing this and trying to get a shop update for Winter done was a little hectic (and the added markets). 

But all-in-all this was an awesome experience. I got some really great work out of it, and even learned something about my style when it comes to digital work and a little bit of shape language. 

Again, would I recommend this for everyone?

Sure, try it out. But don't beat yourself up if you can't complete it. I got really close and couldn't finish the last few days. And that's ok.

It's good to challenge yourself, but it's also good to be kind to yourself. This world is hard enough. And who knows what little nuggets you'll discover about yourself?