In a world of AI slop and toxic social media trends, it’s time to get back to the slow process—so let’s sketch this summer!
My theme for the summer is “Nostalgia” and part of reconnecting to that is this challenge.
Way back in my university days, during the transition of Junior to Senior art student in 2017, my professors gave us a project and a sketchbook— we were to sketch everyday for the whole summer!
This project was not always easy but it was fun, and in the end helped me to improve in more ways than I realized. Also looking back at those sketches, I see memories—snippets of my life during 2017, when things seemed a lot simpler and I was still growing into who I am now.
This year I have decided to reprise this challenge as a way to clear my mind, reconnect to a slower process, and be more in the current moment.
So let’s lay out our ground rules for the challenge, and then my additional goals!
Ground rules
This is a very customizable challenge, because at its core, it’s just about drawing—not perfection or some grand prize—it’s about the process. Dedicating time each day to observation and curiosity.
Rule one
Make two drawings every day.
Rule two
One drawing must be from life
(aka, you are observing something in the 3D environment and must translate it to the 2D).
The second drawing can be anything your heart desires
(some suggestions are: master study, memory drawing, comic strip, anatomy study etc).
Rule three
Try to keep both drawings under 45 minutes.
So you can break this down however you like but some examples are: 30 minutes for your life drawing and 15 for your other sketch, 20 and 25 minutes, 40 and 5, 10 and 35 etc…
The challenge will take place from the summer solstice (Litha) June 21st to the Fall equinox (Mabon) September 22nd. That is a total of 94 days, 13 weeks and some change! If you successful complete two sketches for all of those days, you will have made 188 sketches! That’s a whole lot of drawing!
With that said—if you find these ground rules at all overwhelming, please feel free to make adjustments to better fit your life and time—but the one thing I do implore you to keep out of all of it…is that one drawing from life. The skill of translating what you see around you to the page will be one of the best ways to improve your drawing quickly! It will help to inform anything else you draw, whether you are using a digital reference or your imagination. So don’t skimp on it!
Now believe me, with just these ground rules you will definitely get something out of this challenge, but it also doesn’t hurt to ask yourself “what do I want to achieve from this challenge?”
Which leads into some of my extra goals and thoughts…
My personal goals
Goal one— Filling Sketchbooks
As I already mentioned in my 2026 goals video on YouTube, I always have a sketchbook goal for the year.
https://youtu.be/qiXICJ-pL00?is=sxKX5EdGlTIV2H8C
This year’s goal is to fill 4 sketchbooks, which when I did this project back in university, I more or less did that!
I really want to cut down my sketchbook collection, and eventually get to a place where I only have 1 sketchbook at a time (instead of my dragon hoard)
Goal two— Returning to observation life drawing
I already have a close to daily sketching practice in place, but I realized I’m very rarely drawing from life. So this challenge is to help push me back to and including that into my regular habits! Even if I only end up drawing hands a million times!
Goal three — Ink drawing
I want to also get better at starting a drawing with just straight ink, no under drawing in pencil! I think this will be a fun extra challenge to add on for myself! I also know and want to improve my line-weight with ink! I have noticed that some of my ink work needs some more variation and contrast.
Goal four— use up supplies
While ink will definitely be a focus, I also want to use up my art supplies. I have random pastels, other pencils, markers etc, that I would love to knock the dust off of! Free up some more space in my office too!
Goal five— improvement
Finally, at the end of these 94 days I just want to see improvement of my sketching overall. Line weight and portions, as well as considering my composition on a page.
I will also be doing my best to document this whole process in weekly YouTube videos on my channel! (So an extra challenge to work on quick editing and video creation).
So if you have not joined me over on YouTube, please do consider it!
And that is the meat of the idea! I’m particularly excited to use this as a way to document my life in an analogy way, which I know in this saturated digital age—we are all craving.
I hope you will join me in this, and if you do feel inclined to share your daily sketches on the internet with me, please feel free to tag me (@ciarra_artwork) and use the hashtag #ciarrasummersketch
Happy Drawing!