Drawtober [ART CHALLENGE]

September 26, 2023

Hi, have you heard about the Drawtober Art Challenge? It’s a fun challenge for artists with only 6 Halloween prompts over 31 days!

Learn more, join the community and discover new amazing artists! 🙂

What is Drawtober?

Drawtober is a 31-day drawing challenge – with everyday drawing exercises for its participants. It takes place every October. The theme of Drawtober is usually based on Halloween, however, it doesn’t have to stick completely to this holiday.

The rules are simple, to take part in the challenge you need to pick one of 6 sections from the prompt list, and create 6 works from that section with any technique. Then you post it using the proper hashtag (#drawtober[year]) and that’s it, you just became a participant.
There are no restrictions regarding the art media you can use while participating in this challenge – you can draw, paint, animate, sculpt, create dolls – whatever comes up to your mind!

As usual with challenges like this, we can find different prompt lists on Instagram and Pinterest, because some people try to recreate this challenge on their own and make other variants.

hashtags: #drawtober #drawtober2022

Instagram page: @drawtober
Twitter page: @drawtober

Drawtober Prompt list 2023

You can find official prompt lists on Drawtober’s Twitter and Instagram pages. There are many alternative lists, you can search for them using the #drawtober hashtag on Instagram. Remember, you don’t have to stick to the official prompt list, but if you are using another artist’s list, remember to include their name/link to their prompt list while posting your art!

Who created Drawtober?

2013-2015: Autodesk SketchBook

Drawtober Promo image created by Autodesk-SketchBook

Originally, the first drawing challenge named Drawtober was hosted by Autodesk SketchBook, and the first mention of Drawtober I found is from 2013. It’s an archived gallery on Autodesk-Sketchbook’s Deviantart page: Drawtober 2013.
There’s also an account on Deviantart (created and maintained by Autodesk SketchBook) dedicated to this challenge: @Drawtober.

However, the last Drawtober hosted by Autodesk SketchBook took place in 2015, as in 2016 they decided to join Jake Parker’s Inktober [source: Autodesk SketchBook Journal]

Back then, the challenge had a similar form to the current one, the main difference was that a prompt was published every morning through the whole month of October (instead of publishing a complete prompt list at the beginning of the month), and it took place exclusively on Deviantart.com

2017 – nowadays: Vonnart, Gawki and Diandrapopart

The current form of Drawtober was created and has been maintained by three artists: Vonnart, Gawki and Diandrapopart since 2017.
We don’t know exactly if they got inspired by the previous Drawtober, or came up with it on their own, but they are the creators who stand behind the current/main Drawtober Prompt Lists and continue to hold the Drawtober community together.

Drawtober Past Prompt Lists

As we mentioned before, the Drawtober’s prompt lists may be found on their Twitter. If you use hashtags with previous dates (#drawtober[year]) you can get other lists and calendars.

Drawtober Artworks

Here’s a very small portion of some amazing artworks that were created during Drawtober! It was extremely hard to select only a few of them, so if you want to check out more just go to Twitter or Instagram and type “Drawtober” in the search. You will be amazed by the things that the participants create. I’ve seen even some animations, some artists create even dolls inspired by Drawtober’s prompt list. If you like any of the artworks listed here, please visit the authors page (linked under the artworks) and give them a “thumb up”/”like” to show your appreciation 🙂

Art by Hemlock

Art by Searin.hottie

Obsessed with this Little Nightmares remix! Check out the full @drawtober creepy circus troupe I made this month pic.twitter.com/DmufP1pExP

— Nic (@Nicolpops) October 28, 2021