Peachtober 2023

Why did I consider participating?

I considered participating in Inktober last year, because I wanted to practice drawing bees in different compositions for an illustration project I’m still working on called, Weltevrede. This illustration project is a short story about a bee (called Honeybee) who lives on a South African farm (Weltevrede), along with her friends; a crow, sunflower and a rabbit. However, when I started this project I realised that my drawings were very stiff and my bees were all drawn in the same composition. That is why I wanted to challenge myself and study bees by participating in the October art challenge.

Since I didn't necessarily want to use ink as an art medium or use the drawing prompts for Inktober, I decided to participate in Peachtober instead.

What is Peachtober?

Peachtober, created by Sha’an d’Anthes (FurryLittlePeach), is similar to Inktober, but it isn't necessarily limited to a specific art medium. It is considered more as a general creative prompt list, where illustrators, seamstresses, collage and ceramic artists make art based on the challenge's prompts.

The Rules I set for the Drawing Challenge:

I decided to participate in Peachtober, mainly because of the first prompt on the list, BEE. This prompt sparked the idea of using the whole prompt list as inspiration to practice drawing bees in different compositions and scenarios. So, once I made the decision that I was going to participate in Peachtober I set the following rules for myself:

To include a bee in each drawing prompt.
To only use Colour Pencils.
To sketch them all no bigger than A4 sketchbook size.
To try and come up with a story scenario for each drawing.

Conclusion

I set out to participate in this challenge to improve my bee drawing skills, but what I didn't anticipate was how it would influence me creatively.

It has helped me to come up with new ideas and characters for my story, I've improved my general design / composition skills and I'm definitely more confidant using colour pencils.

If you haven't tried doing a drawing challenge yet, I definitely recommend it.