Drawing Contests

I have been interested in drawing contests ever since I was a little kid. Of course, when you are a kid it is easy to impress people. My children’s art contests were usually of the “everyone wins” kind. Nonetheless, every once in awhile I would accomplish something pretty impressive. There ws a local Free Press sponsored drawing contest when I was a child, for example, which I did very well in. We were supposed to draw a favorite spot in our community. I drew the park at the corner and came in second place. It wasn’t a very impressive park, but I did my best with it. Maybe if I had had a better subject, I might have come in first.

Anyway, children’s drawing contests and the serious design contests I am interested in nowadays are like night and day. A professional drawing contest is a big deal. Even the cartooning contests I entered in college were pretty significant. Most college art contests and writing contests won’t exactly launch your career, but they will you be an edge over other people. Being able to say that you have been published or recognized when you are only 19 or 20 is really something. It looks good on you portfolio and impresses your peers like nothing else. Best of all, art contests allow you to get used to sharing your works with other people. New artists need to be able to deal with rejection, and getting feedback from a few contests while you are a kid helps you learn that skill.

The thing about art is that it is all a matter of building up a portfolio. A few good pieces which have gotten recognition will be much more valuable for you as an artist than having dozens of pieces which have not. Art drawings need to be published, recognized in a contest, or otherwise lauded to really hold a lot of capital in the design field. Don’t get me wrong, you can get somewhere just by being good, but you can get even further if you have already been recognized as being good. That is why it is so important to enter whatever contests you can get into.

If you have never entered drawing contests before, stay away from the ones that charge an entrance fee of more than a couple dollars. Once you have more experience, you will get an eye for Spotting a good drawing contest and telling apart from a bad one. Until that point, however, you should stick with the safe bets.