Queer Summer Art Challenge
By Sassafras Lowrey
Summer is here and instead of just spending your free time scrolling TikTok, consider getting your creative energy flowing, by setting a summer art challenge for yourself! Art can be a great way to explore your own identities, celebrate community, and document the experiences you have this summer.
Why Do Art:
Everyone has a story to tell and can have fun getting messy and creative regardless of if you have ever considered yourself to be an artist. Challenging yourself to do some art this summer is an opportunity to document the things you’re doing, your friendships, and what you’re thinking about. It’s also a fun creative way to process things you might be seeing in the news, engage with, movies you are enjoying, and music you’re listening to. Art of any kind can provide an outlet for expressing yourself, and clear your mind of stress and anxiety, making it a fun way to add some self-care into your summer routine.
Create a Scrapbook/Sketchbook/Chapbook:
As you challenge yourself to create art this summer it can be fun to develop a regular artistic practice for yourself. This could look like finding some time daily to work on creative projects, and making small art journals or projects that you can take with you on summer adventures. You don’t need anything fancy when it comes to supplies to do an art challenge. To create a summer art sketchbook or art journal, consider using a notebook you probably have laying around. You can also get an inexpensive notebook from a dollar store, or even take some blank or lined paper, fold it in half, staple it together, and make a notebook yourself. The goal is to create a small and portable sketchbook or art journal for you to create this summer.
Use What You Find:
For the other art supplies, you can use supplies you already have or can find inexpensively. You can make collages with old magazines, junk mail, or free newspapers you find at your local library. Old school supplies, like pens, crayons, air-dry sculpting clay, watercolors, glue sticks, and pencils can all be utilized in your summer art challenge so there’s no need to spend a lot of money on art supplies. Traveling this summer? You can bring your summer art project along with you and record artifacts from your trip like plane tickets, photographs, and postcards. You can also take a few moments to sketch or paint things you see. Having a quiet summer? Take yourself on a local creative outing — sit in a park and draw, paint, or write about the things you see. You can also bring your sketchbook with you to a coffee shop, library, or to a local Pride event. Use receipts you get, or what you see and overhear as inspiration for creating.
Challenge Yourself:
In addition to challenging yourself to make art regularly this summer, you can also try doing different kinds of artistic activities. Getting outside of your creative comfort zone can be liberating, inspiring, and you might just surprise yourself by discovering a type of art you never thought you would be good at or enjoy. Not sure where to start? Here are some artistic prompts to get you started:
- Make a collage with images, colors, and words that inspire you.
- Write a poem.
- Create something you can wear.
- Make digital art on your phone or using a tablet.
- Teach yourself a new kind of art by watching a video on Instagram or YouTube.
- Draw a comic strip, or even a whole comic book about what you’re doing this summer.
- Create fanart about a favorite LGBTQ+ character, show, or movie.
Why Make Queer Art?
Through history, many LGBTQ+ people have found comfort through art and used it to explore their own identities and commenting on the cultural experience of being LGBTQ+ in the world.
By centering your LGBTQ+ identity in your art practice you can feel less isolated. Your experience as an individual, and as an LGBTQ+ person is uniquely yours. Creating art from your perspective, about your lived experience is something that literally nobody else can do. Art is a way that you can express yourself, challenge yourself, or just get to know yourself little bit better, most of all, art is fun! Here are some ways to add queer themes into your art practice this summer.
- Create a stylized version of your favorite pride flag.
- Write or make art about something going on in the news related to the LGBTQ+ community.
- Make art inspired by a queer role model.
- Create art that is celebratory of a part of your identity.
- Write a letter to an LGBTQ+ person from history about how their work inspired you.
- Create art about or inspired by a pride event you’ve attended or want to attend.
Don’t Worry, Get Creative!
As you start creating you might worry about if you’re doing things correctly or making art that is “good.” The point of this art challenge is just to experiment, play, and have fun making something. Also, keep in mind that most of us are our own biggest critics and this self-criticism can lead to us keeping ourselves from creating anything! Don’t worry about if you’re going to be “good” at writing or drawing just get your ideas onto the page. You never have to show your art to anyone if you don’t want to, but you might surprise yourself with how much you like the different things that you create and how much fun you have centering queer joy and exploring new art mediums.
