The Zooly Art Challenge is almost upon us: it begins tomorrow, July 1st! We’ve had a great response on our Facebook page, and we can declare enthusiastically that Zooly rules!

We’ve had a lot of questions since our first posts about it, so I hope this will answer most of them. If you think of something I haven’t covered here, feel free to ask in the comments.

Zooly Rules:

Rule Number One: There are no rules! 

Oh, OK, there are some basic parameters… and we might make up some more as we go along.

This challenge is for YOU, to stimulate your creativity and to have fun. Only you can make the rules for YOUR challenge — and even then, you can regard them as more like guidelines (to paraphrase a certain pirate captain).

That said, any challenge has to have a bit of structure. We have set up the prompts to spark your imagination and to allow a bit of synergy around everyone interpreting a similar subject. From there, you can interpret the prompt in any medium, any style that you like, traditional or digital. We do ask if you are doing altered work, please credit the original source material. And feel free to describe your process with your post or link to a description — we’re all curious about each other’s work!

You don’t have to do all the prompts — if you even do one this month, that’s one more bit of creativity that has entered the world than would be here otherwise!

You can take our prompts in any order you like from the advance prompt list (though we’ll still be posting them in order on the designated days on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). If you jump ahead, please wait until the day and post your artwork in the comments below the prompt then. Ditto if you’ve done an animal that’s already been posted, just find the post that matches your critter!

If you find you like doing one animal a lot, and want to do multiple creations, have at it  — but please space out your posts in the comments over time, to give others some room to be seen.

There are no official prizes. The big reward of doing a challenge is to have done the artwork, and to see what others are doing with the same idea. It also builds community; in other challenges, friendships have been forged, collaborations have been born, and who knows, there may even have been romances incited!

Some people use a challenge to create a body of work; others use it as a way to get themselves making art every day. For some it is a bit of light, creative fun; for others it is therapy. How do you think you will approach this challenge? Do you have questions? Let’s get the conversation rolling!

Post your creations on our Facebook page in the comments under the appropriate animal prompt, or post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #zoolyartchallenge. If you don’t want to post them publicly, hang them on your fridge or make an album of them. I hope you’ll join us for a month of creative summer fun!