As I was scrolling Twitter on October 1st, I saw a post by a local art collective that I like a lot called the Arch Hive. They were announcing their annual art challenge, Archtober, where they post a series of prompts for every day in October and invite artists to create something for any or all of the prompts and share what they create on social media. This was my first time hearing about Archtober–let alone participating in it–so there may be more (or less) to Archtober than what I’ve described above, but in short it’s an annual art challenge hosted by a cool art group.

Why Archtober?

The Arch Hive is based in Provo and describes itself as “…exploring the unique perspectives & peculiarities of Utah, Mormonism, and the American West…” I always thought the Arch Hive was a Mormonism-based group, and several of the Archtober prompts were related to Mormonism, whether directly or indirectly through Utah’s Mormon history.

I’m not particularly tied to Mormonism, though I do live in Utah and, therefore, experience the Church’s heavy influence here. I wondered if I was the right kind of person to participate in Archtober; however, when the Arch Hive posted its challenge, I couldn’t ignore the awesome opportunity it represented for the Sleepy Bois Club.

The SBC encourages people to engage with life in intentional and fulfilling ways. Art is certainly a great way to engage with self and other, and the Arch Hive is an organization that uniquely embodies the land where the SBC was established. Even if members of the SBC aren’t Mormons themselves (and even though many were previously Mormons), I thought this challenge would be a great way for us to engage in our local community as a club.

My Archtober Experience

Some moderately organized thoughts and experiences.

Getting Started with ✨Art✨

I have never considered myself much of an artist. I took some art classes in middle school and have always been good at pictionary. I never felt like I was “bad” at art, but I don’t have any formal training and never had much interest. The most experience I have in “art” is some self-taught photoshop and video editing.

Early in the Archtober challenge, I was doing fairly simple sketches, just taking a few minutes each day to sort of prototype a concept based on the prompts from the challenge. But even in the early stages, I found myself pretty impressed with what I was able to produce.

As days and prompts passed, I started to gain more confidence in my abilities and started to try to realize concepts that seemed like real challenges to me. Sometimes I didn’t even know if I had the artistic or technical ability to do what I wanted to draw 😅. But I was having fun and looked forward to the few minutes I would spend each day to participate in the Archtober challenge.

The Archtober Community

I didn’t see a lot of community involvement in the first few days of the challenge. It could have been that I didn’t really know the community very well, or maybe the artists who participated needed some time to produce more well-developed concepts than my simple sketches.

After a few days passed, I started to see some really cool art, photos, and poems posted by people on Twitter and Instagram. There were some posts that had really cool and clear imagery. A few examples include a sketch of a salt shaker that contained an ocean scene and another drawing of a mermaid brine shrimp, both for “Salt Lake”; some works that appeared to be multimedia, like a retro-style image that featured carpet textures on cartoon outfits for “carpet walls”; many, many poems about the conflicted relationship one might have with the Mormon religion; and an artist who designed several posters with different pop culture references such as video games, sports, and national parks.

On the other hand, there were a few posts that were visually stunning or otherwise impressive that I couldn’t quite figure out. One of my favorites was an ouroboros chopped into chunks laying on a desert floor for “desolate.” It was a piece I really liked, but I can’t say that I know exactly what the artist meant to say with the work. I flatter myself to believe that someone might have felt the same way about one or another of my Archtober drawings.

There were times when I wondered if I really should be sharing my little sketches as I was seriously impressed by everything I saw others post with #archtober2023. But I was able to get over myself and stick with it until I genuinely liked what I was creating with each challenge prompt.

Archtober Becomes a Challenge

A couple weeks into the challenge, I started to feel the pressure of creating an artistic work every day. There were times when I felt a sense of dread about particular prompts that didn’t quite inspire me the way that others had in the early days of Archtober. I think there a few factors at play in this creative dread:

Drawing more stuff, taking more time

As I got more comfortable with the creative process and the tools I was using to draw, I started challenging myself to do more interesting things with my drawings. First, I started by adding color to my sketches in simple ways, then in more intricate and complicated ways. I started adding scenery to each drawing, increasing the number of objects and concepts I’d have to draw for each sketch. By the end of the month, I was spending multiple hours per day, creating sketches that comprised multiple drafts, several object concepts, and dozens of layers on my little tablet. It was much more of a commitment than I had in mind in the first days of Archtober.

Growing as an artist, liking my ✨Art✨

I was happy with my work early in the challenge, but as I grew as an artist (and I did grow as an artist! 😊), I continued to grow in my appreciation of my art.

I think the brevity of Archtober and the sensation of novelty I felt from the creative challenge made it easy for me to invest time into the activity. I was really enjoying the process of creation, and that genuine joy I felt made me feel comfortable pushing myself beyond my ability with each new sketch. Each time I tried something new and succeeded, I felt another surge of satisfaction and pride in both my efforts and my work.

There were times when, as I began to genuinely admire my own work, I worried that feeling like I was getting good at art would ruin it for me. I wondered if I would reach a plateau where I wasn’t impressed with my art anymore and I would lose interest in drawing all together… Well, thankfully there are only 31 days in Archtober, so I didn’t have enough time to develop my skills to that point 😁

Did I copy Camilla?

My first drawing featured a skull, which was inspired by the disco skull in the Scooby Doo movie (lol). Then I kept drawing skulls or skeletons until it was too late: every drawing centered around this little skeleton character I had created.

BUT

A few days into the challenge, I saw one of Camilla Stark’s posts for Archtober. Camilla is one of the founders of the Arch Hive and a local artist whose work I have always enjoyed very much. And I realized that my little skeleton character reminded me a lot of her self-caricature, the Desert Prophet. 🙃

I don’t know if my little drawings were too derivative, and I felt embarrassed for a couple of days over how similar my drawings looked to hers. I was familiar with her work, and there is no way I wasn’t inspired by the cartoons I had seen on her socials in the past. But, after feeling like a total fraud for a couple days, I just accepted that I probably was inspired by her. There’s not much more to say about it than that.

If Camilla were to read this, I would hope she appreciated that I am a fan of her work, and I didn’t mean to copy her work so closely (I don’t think I’m even a good enough artist for that to have been the case). And I’m super excited for her graphic novel to come out!

Make sure to check out Camilla’s Instagram!

Final Thoughts

On the one hand, I’m sad that Archtober is over. I had so much fun spending daily time on art and exploring a new skill and hobby. Feeling like I was participating with a community made the challenge even more fun.

On the other hand, I’m a little relieved that the challenge is over 😅. Though I had a really great time with the challenge, it was a big commitment. This is probably why the Arch Hive posted all the prompts in optional pairs, allowing artists to work on one prompt every other day rather than having to complete one every day of the month. This is one of those type two kinds of fun where I’m more happy now that it’s over and I’m really glad to have participated in it. 😊

As always, I’m looking forward to the next event the Arch Hive hosts, whether that’s another art challenge, an art show, or a booth at an art festival. I’m really excited to see what I do with this newly acquired skill. I wonder how I will keep up and improve my drawing skills without daily prompts, and even worry that it might fall by the wayside as I continue down the path of infinite possibilities called life. But I will embrace the opportunities that present themselves and remember fondly my experience with Archtober 2023.