All things come to an end, that's an universal truth.
After a rather difficult and eventful 2020, where many things changed for virtually all of us, I decided to step back from a challenge I've grown to love and have been doing for the better part of two years. Today I want to tell you all about why I made this decision and I also will offer you an opportunity to look back at all 23 drawings I created.
First of all, what challenge am I talking about?
The "Colors of the Month" are a challenge created by an American company called 'Marker Universe'. Every month they pick a limited selection of colors (originally three markers, although there were exceptions, as you will see later) and artists are challenged to create a drawing using only said limited color scheme. Adding black and white was permitted, but no other colors (note that I did end up adding a colorless marker to get pale hues, but it also served as a tool erase unwanted blotches, so I suppose it still counts as "using no other color" ^_^).
That does sound fun, doesn't it? I thought so too, when I first heard of it (thanks to my Aceo community, where someone listed various drawing challenges) and I was eager to join, especially since I wasn't that confident in using Copic Markers and figured it would be a great opportunity to improve my skills. At the time I only wanted to give it a try once or twice - I didn't expect that I would turn it into a regular challenge though, one that would accompany me for twenty-three consecutive months.
Before I'm going to talk about why I decided to stop, let's look back at each and every drawing I created since I joined in February 2019 :) I'm going to share galleries of my scanned artworks, but I also suggest you look at the separate photos (especially of the ones where I used metallic paint, the scanner simply can't capture the beautiful sheen) - and if you're interested, you can also read a bit about my thoughts behind the illustrations ♥
2019
Like I said, I learned about the challenge in February, so I only created elven drawings during 2019 - most of them starring my own characters, but I also drew some fanarts. I didn't want to draw random pictures, so I racked my brain each month to find a character matching the color scheme - which was really tricky at times *laughs*
February 2019
Colors: E13 (Light Suntan), E27 (Milk Chocolate), R22 (Light Prawn)
The challenge started easy enough. The colors reminded me of plum blossoms, so I quickly figured my fox Umeko would be perfect for my first illustration. Looking back at it now, I must say it's still one of my favorites ♥
Oh and in case you're wondering about the golden moon...Since I didn't really plan on making the challenge a regular thing, I didn't take the "adding no other colors" that serious yet 😅 You'll also notice that I kept adding metallic paint to a few of my first illustrations for the challenge.
March 2019
Colors: YR01 (Peach Puff), B01 (Mint Blue), BG07 (Petroleum Blue)
Another of my favorites ♥ I remember that I called this illustration of my OC Takio "Narcissus", not only due to the daffodils behind him, but also based on the greek myth about a man who fell in love with his own reflection. Considering how vain my dear Takio is, this was quite fitting, don't you agree? x'D
April 2019
Colors: BG000 (Pale Aqua), BG34 (Horizon Green), RV21 (Light Pink)
This was the first time I kinda struggled. The colors were extremely pale and I wasn't quite sure what to do with them, but fortunately I was able to create a lovely, layered grey by mixing all three markers. I'm quite happy with the result and I think the magnolia flowers are a beautiful background for my OC Hanaye (who happens to be Takio's sister).
May 2019
Colors: G29 (Pine Tree Green), V12 (Pale Lilac), RV66 (Raspberry)
Another difficult one :'D. Pinks and purples aren't necessarily my favorite colors and at first I really had no idea what to draw, the colors matched none of my characters. Fortunately my favorite game (Dragon Age: Origins) inspired me to draw one of its strange creatures: a desire demon.
June 2019
Colors: Y35 (Maize), YR04 (Chrome Orange), YG01 (Green Bice)
More Fanart, this time of Link from Legend of Zelda - I thought the colors suited him nicely. I'll admit, putting the triforce in the background wasn't the most creative idea, but ah well. I did like the idea of painting his eyes golden though, to symbolize his inner strength.
This was the last picture where I "broke the rule" of not adding another color, by the way. I figured since I've been doing the challenge for a few months now, I might as well do it right from now on.
July 2019
Colors: BV01 (Viola), BV04 (Blue Berry), RV14 (Begonia Pink)
Now THIS was an easy one *laughs*. The moment I saw the color scheme, I KNEW I had to draw Vaati from "The Minish Cap" (my favorite part of the Legend of Zelda series). I depicted him framed by his more ”monstrous” form, to show that even within such a creature, there's still just a a little Picori boy, who wanted nothing more than to impress and surpass his master.
August 2019
Colors: FBG2 (Fluorescent Dull Blue Green), FRV1 (Fluo. Pink), FY1 (Fluo. Yellow Orange)
Neon colors! Now THIS was tricky at first, it felt like having to draw with highlighter pens. But after some brooding, I decided that I might as well use the fluorescent colors to my advantage and turn them into neon signs. The result has got to be one of my most favorite pieces I did for the CoM, especially because I also really liked my idea of putting the cityscape into Gabryel's wings.
September 2019
Colors: Y13 (Lemon Yellow), YG05 (Salad), G28 (Ocean Green)
Ahh this illustration - it's another of my personal favorites. I remember asking the creators of the challenge whether I was allowed to add grey markers or if this was cheating and after I got their permission, drawing the artwork was smooth sailing (even if the crosshatching took forever and it took a lot of effort to convince myself that it's okay to paint his face green x'D). The grey tones really helped to emphasize the green glow of Venras' magic ♥
October 2019
Colors: R20 (Blush), YR15 (Pumpkin Yellow), Gold
This was the first exception to the three marker rule, since it only included two colors plus gold. It was a pleasant change to the challenge, even though drawing this piece wasn't easy. At the time I felt quite burnt out (due to Inktober, among other things) and I had to redo the lineart because I messed up the first attempt, but at least the final result looks quite nice. I still like the more or less spontaneous idea of adding some golden lines to Levant's hair :)
November 2019
Colors: B29 (Ultramarine), B04 (Tahitian Blue), Silver
With the previously mentioned Inktober behind me, I took a break from art to recharge my creative energies and it really helped. That I had been
“feeling blue” for a long time also served as an inspiration for this artwork of Jowan (from "Dragon Age: Origins"). Even if he's done many, terrible
things, he's a character I cannot help but sympathize with and I had so much fun drawing him again (for the fourth or fifth time).
December 2019
Colors: C-2 (Cool Gray No.2), YR23 (Yellow Ochre), R27 (Cadmium Red)
The final color selection of 2019 was beautiful, because it instantly reminded me of one of my own characters: the dark elven warrioress Yraloin ♥ My main memory of this picture is how much I enjoyed drawing her hair *laughs*.
2020
Oh, 2020...What an awful year. But I know I'm not alone with this sentiment. I mean, who could've imagined that we would be stuck in a pandemic? Although my own lifestyle wasn't affected that much by it, I still feel sympathy for everyone who has been struggling emotionally, as well as financially and of course also for those who had to mourn people they lost to that terrible illness.
A personal loss was also what made the year a living hell for me - although loss is probably not the right term, let's call it...a cruel betrayl and heartbreak. I don't want to dwell on it here and repeat everything I've already said somewhere else, but it lead me to taking a long, wholesome hiatus. As a result of this I missed some months of the challenge and drew some of them later.
January 2020
Colors: R14 (Light Rouge), RV69 (Peony), B26 (Cobalt Blue)
This was another easy one, mainly because I had used the color "Peony" multiple times to draw Morrigan from Dragon Age: Origins and I figured the blue would also work nicely for her hair and the feathers. I still kept the background relatively simple, but this was going to change later that year.
February 2020
Colors: R11 (Pale Cherry Pink), V05 (Marigold), Y13 (Lemon Yellow)
I had a rocky start with that one, because again I stumbled over the same problem of "what am I supposed to do with those pinks?". But as soon as I realized it's exactly Rapunzel's color scheme from Disney's Tangled, the rest was easy. I love how the Yellow mixed so beautifully with the pinks to create her golden haircolor and I personally think that framing her with her her hair was a fun idea :)
March 2020
Colors: YG03 (Yellow Green), FV2 (Fluorescent Dull Violet), B06 (Peacock Blue)
This was the first CoM piece where I went for a more detailed background, but I still stayed true to my original
theme of having an ornament of sorts behind the character, which I had done for most of my artworks for this series. Rather than picking a geometrical shape however, I went for the silhouette of
a bird, since my OC Karasu is a crow.
April 2020
Colors: BG01 (Aqua Blue), R24 (Prawn), G05 (Emerald Green)
I think this is my least favorite CoM illustration, less so because of the piece itself, but because of the memories behind it. I heavily struggled with my art and depression
at the time and thus felt rather uninspired. Fortunately the colors reminded me of the three Goddesses from "The Legend of Zelda" (based on their
designs from the Oracles games), so at least I managed to finish the challenge for that month.
May 2020
Colors: YR04 (Chrome Orange), BG07 (Petroleum Blue), YG06 (Yellowish Green)
The May 2020 CoM was my last "regular" one for a while, since I suffered the aforementioned loss at the end of the month and thus fell into a state of grief. There
isn't much to say about this illustration either, other than that it's one of the most detailed ones and that it's starring my OC General Jehldis (whom you might recognize from a few panels of
this ancient comic. You may also notice that I've updated his design.).
June 2020
Colors: B29 (Ultramarine), RV06 (Cerise), E25 (Caribe Cocoa) /
Hex#352977, Hex#DB549E, Hex#BE755A
During the months of my hiatus I mainly distracted myself by playing videogames, but as I was recovering slowly, I also found my way back to digital art. That's also why I decided to experiment a little with the June colors and rather than by using markers, I painted this illustration in Photoshop. It's a comparatively simple artwork, but I still like it, especially since I got to cope with my pain through this portrait of my dark elf Vyon.
July 2020
Colors: N2 (Neutral Gray 2.), G16 (Malachite) & choose your third color
The July colors held a special challenge, since we were allowed to pick our own third color - I went for N7 (Neutral Gray 7), because I intended to turn it into a
grayscale drawing, using the beautiful green as an eyecatcher, similar to other "Colorsplash/Colorkey" I had done previously in 2019 (you can see my favorite example here).
Even though I only finished this illustration in December, I'm still happy with it - especially since it's the first piece of my OC Zade I shared (a new-ish character who had also helped me to cope).
August 2020
Colors: B29 (Ultramarine), RV14 (Begonia Pink), Y18 (Lightning Yellow)
This colorful picture is actually the final CoM illustration I did and I finished it just recently, in January 2021. I still have no real clue why I ended up drawing Fuu though *laughs* I think it was because the colors reminded me of sunflowers and they, in turn, reminded me of Samurai Champloo and since I had re-watched the anime just recently, I thought it was a good idea.
September 2020
Colors: FV2 (Fluorescent Dull Violet), YG67 (Moss), R17 (Lipstick Orange)
By the end of August I was back to posting my artworks online and hence the September CoM was the first challenge I participated in actively, after the months of my absence. And since I really missed my watercolors, I ended up deciding to use those instead (Sap Green to replace YG67, Cobalt Blue Violet as FV2, Organic Vermillion for R17). It's an illustration of one of my favorite Ghibli movies: "The secret world of Arrietty".
October 2020
Colors: E09 (Burnt Sienna), E27 (Milk Chocolate), FYR1 (Fluorescent Orange)
Oh, I really love this one! October was generally a great month art-wise, since I created my own drawing challenge called "Yasa-OC-Tober" (I might create a separate post about this experience sometime, we'll see) and got a lot of support from fellow artists and friends who also joined.
In between all these black and white artworks, the CoM was a welcome change and I took it as an incentive to redraw an old picture of my OC Shinseiji. I'm really happy with the fire - turns out fluorescent oranges are great for fire (but then again I've written that before, haven't I? XD).
November 2020
Colors: E02 (Fruit Pink), YG95 (Pale Olive), E95 (Tea Orange)
I think this was one of the first moments where I realized that I was getting increasingly dissatisfied with the challenge - not because of what I drew though, far from it. I really enjoyed working with the white of the paper to create the illusion of strong sunlight and I think it's a neat illustration of my OC Seiichiro, but... I couldn't work with the given colors. When I first swatched them, I noticed that "Fruit Pink" and "Tea Orange" looked nearly identical (more about that below), so it would've been like working with two colors rather than three, causing me to switch E02 with R11 (Pale Cherry Pink), of course with permission by the challenge's organizers.
December 2020
Colors: BG02 (New Blue), B28 (Royal Blue), B79 (Iris)
Like I said, I spent my summer playing a lot of videogames, one of them being "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" and after a (sort of) prequel game was released in late 2020 ("Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity), I was kinda obsessed with the franchise *laughs*. It guess you could say that it was little surprise that I drew Princess Zelda for the final CoM of the year. Nothing much to say here, other than that I liked the icy mood created by the three diferent blue tones.
So, why do I no longer join the CoM challenge?
As you can see, I really had fun with the Colors of the Month and I think in the end I did reach my goal of getting more confident in drawing with Copic markers, all thanks to this constant practice every month. However many things changed and I can't pinpoint exactly when it started to happen, but I can name a few. Because you see...I suppose it's not just one specific thing that made me decide to quit now, but rather a collection of various, smaller factors.
In the beginning, I was really excited. Not just about the prospect of learning new skills, but I also thought this was a wonderful opportunity to expand my collection of copic markers and discover new colors I didn't own before (for example I probably would've have bought the Fluorescent colors, if the challenge didn't inspire me to). So naturally, whenever a new month drew nearer, I got really excited and couldn't wait to find out what color selection was going to be next.
At first everything went well for a while, but then I started encountering repeated colors, which in itself is no problem - I mean hey, I don't need to spend money on new markers, right? But when a color gets repeated three times (I'm looking at you, B29), you start to notice and it diminished the fun of working with new colors. Ultramarine wasn't the only case, by the way, other ones (E27 "Milk Chocolate", FV2 "Fluorescent Dull Violett" and BG07 "Petroleum Blue", to name three more examples) kept showing up twice as well and it made me wonder why, after all there's a vast amount of colors to choose from. I don't know if it was coincidence or a lack of care on the part of the challenge's creators, but no matter the reason, it's one of the things that lessened the fun I had with the challenge.
Another slight disappointment came with the color selection for November 2020.
I've mentioned it briefly above, but it was strange that two of the colors looked almost the same (and E02 looked nothing like the digital swatch supplied on the challenge's color guide, which was supposed to be more like a light, peachy pink. I realize different screens vary in how the colors are shown, but this was a huge difference). Again I wondered how this could happen and I did message the company about this issue, however and they suggested that it may have to do with the different papers we tested on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have my own guesses regarding the issue, but I'm not going to share them here, since they're merely unverified speculations.
The final reason I'd like to mention is the one that finally tipped the scale and forced me to make a choice. Like every month, I was curious to see the new colors selection, but when I went to
check the website to find the January colors, I was surprised - and maybe a little shocked - to see that something had changed for the worse. As of January 2021, the Colors of the Month challenge
no longer contains three markers, but instead I only found four colored boxes with hexcodes written down below. Whereas usually they would add a list of brands and their respective color names
for each color, this information was completely missing. Of course I went and messaged the company again, to find out if it simply had been forgotten, only to find out that this was intentional.
Their reason being, that apparently people had often asked whem, whether they could "join in on the challenge even if they don’t own the brands". Which...Doesn't really make sense? I mean,
people could still do that previously - in fact you've seen me do something similar with my solution for the September CoM 2020, where I used watercolors instead of markers. Rather than removing
the information all together, one could've added a line stating that people were free to choose alternatives, if they so desire, but I suppose this was easier for them.
It may not sound that tragic to some, but for me this change is not only a huge inconvenience, but it completely defeats the purpose of seeing what other people create with the very same color selection, which somehow was the whole point of the challenge. (That, and it also meant I could no longer expand my collection by discovering new Copic colors, which was one of my personal reasons why I joined in the first place.)
But in any case. These are only some of the many reasons why I decided to stop joining the Colors of the Month challenge. There are more, but again I'd prefer to keep them to myself, since I don't want to sound unkind, nor do I want to utter speculations regarding business decisions the organizers of the challenge may or may not have made, but that ultimately led me to be increasingly unhappy with how the challenge was handled.
I also would like to say that this decision was not an easy one to make - to be entirely honest with you, I was really upset about it and it took a while for me to come to terms with it, because I've really grown to love that challenge and it has been with me for almost two years. That's also why I decided to write this post, to properly bid the challenge farewell, and to have a place to go back to, to remember all the fun I had with the Colors of the Month.
As a final note: of course this does not mean that I'll completely quit creating limited color illustrations, but in the future I'm going to pick my own colors - and I won't only stick to markers, either. In fact, I already did something similar recently, when I created a limited color watercolor piece of my OC Hidetomo. If you're curious, you can find it by clicking on this link.
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