Why you should do an online challenge

World Watercolour Month starts tomorrow (July 1st) and I'm really excited to participate in the challenge this year. You may say, don't you make stamps and prints? Why watercolour? My answer is because I love it and I think there's no other painting medium like it. It's also one of the fastest ways to add colour to an image after it's been hand printed. Printmaking is can also be a slow medium and creating work in watercolour helps me make something quick while I'm waiting on ink to dry!

Sometimes I like participating in online challenges, following hashtags or working with prompt lists. While they can be nerve wrecking, stressful and time consuming, I've found it's helpful to participate in them. Here's a few reasons why.

1. Helps you find your tribe

Challenges help you make connections with like minded people. This gives you a way of sharing your love for a specific topic with another person especially when no one else you know seems to be interested in your passion!

I see this a lot with plant lovers. Every month there's challenges and hashtags and I've found that this encourages the exchange of ideas in a very engaging way.

2. Forces you to try new things

Earlier this month I participated in Ohn Mar Win's summer time painting challenge and it's through working on this I was able to create my next batch of greeting cards. I've never really drawn the subjects of the challenge and it was really helpful to discover that drawing sunglasses and popsicles could be so rewarding and fun. She also put out instructional videos to accompany the prompts. I found these really helpful. I'm looking forward to her next challenge.

So if you're on the fence, I encourage you to give an online challenge a try! You'll gain the opportunity to learn something new, form new connections or even inspire yourself and others to keep improving in your area of interest.

If you take part in World Watercolour Month please tag me, I'd love to see what you make! I'll be sharing what I do on Instagram and of course a weekly round up here.

See you next week!