DId I draw 100 people last week? Yes I did! #OneWeek100People2026

This year I took part in #OneWeek100People2026 - this is a challenge organized by @lizsteelart and @m.holmes.art - they run it every year - sometimes via facebook, sometimes on instagram - but the idea is to give your people sketching muscles a workout for a week. I encourage you to check out a blog post from Liz as this year she drew 100 people twice and got interviewed about the project by Guardian - here is a link to the article! 

I love drawing people from life and really enjoyed making this challenge all about my neighborhood in 2025. But my schedule this time around did not allow for so many real-life opportunities - only sketches in the first image were drawn from life:

To get to a 100 I drew from youtube videos - researching movements of tennis players and archers:

And I drew with the wonderful online portrait party drawing group: pencils4tea

And then I joined a super fun 40 min drawing session that Suhita Shirodkar ran this year - her guest artist was a wonderful artist from New Zealand: Andrew James, and we drew musicians:

And on Thursday I was a guest artist at Suhita's substack gathering and we drew from the photos of Ukrainian photographer Alexandra Bolotina. She was a travel and portrait photographer before the full-scale invasion of russian army into Ukraine in 2022 and today her work is spread to photography, organizing creation of adaptive clothing for people who suffered injuries in the war and support children with disabilities. She lives and works in Kharkiv, Ukraine. You can support her work via PayPal donation - send me a note and I will connect you. 

Here is a link to a video recording of our session with Suhita Shirodkar where you can see original photos and process of how these quick portraits were created. 

One Week 100 People 2025

This week I took part in #oneweek100people challenge hosted by @lizsteelart and @m.holmes.art - they run this challenge every year - sometimes via facebook, sometimes on instagram - but the idea is to give your people sketching muscles a workout for a week. I tried to take part in this challenge in 2020 - here is a post that details how I prepared (the world closed up by the end of that week - not many people drawing happened for a long while after). Then I did a fun one in 2021. In 2022 and 2023 I skipped these as the war in Ukraine consumed all the spare resources. But 2024 this was one challenge that I went back to and actually completed.  

For 2025 I decided to make it about my community and sketch on location. During the week of March 3rd I walked, biked and drove around my neighborhood to capture people as they were going about their week. 

What helped me was 

1. Having a very simple set of tools in my shoulder bag (see below) ready to go
2. Scheduling time (mostly at the end of my lunch hour) throughout the week to do this.
3. Having a list of potential places to go ready (so that if there is no energy to make a choice - I have a good default - see below).

Here are my 100 people: kids at school, people in the park, at stores, in the old folks home and in the library and at the protest. 

How I Did Not Participate in a Challenge

For several years in a row, I enjoyed participating in a #30X30directwatercolor challenge. It was created several years ago by two unstoppable artists Uma Kelkar and Marc Taro Holmes. The original rule was that during the month of June, one would create 30 sketches with watercolor but without any help from the line-making tools (pencil, pen, etc.)  I've enjoyed bending the rules to work in gouache and did this challenge for several years in a row concentrating on a solid block of work done in a short period - like an art sprint in the middle of the year! 

In 2017 I did 30 tiny gouaches, in 2018 I did 30 drawings made with 20 brushstrokes or less, in 2019 I did 30 mini gouache paintings, in 2020 I did a bunch of interiors and virtual traveling from photos and livestreams, I was traveling to Ukraine in June 2021 so I skipped that year and the next year the war entered our lives.

This year things did not align for me to do this challenge however I did the next best thing I could: I kept the challenge on my radar:

1. During this June I tried to follow the #30x30directwatercolor hashtag on instagram and check out facebook group to comment on some of the works that others were making. I looked at what goals people were pursuing, and how they were managing to keep the rhythm (as anyone who did even a week-long challenge knows, there are always ups and downs in motivation, quality, and support in any challenges). 

2. Every time I had a little bit of extra time and/ or energy - I tried to do something in the spirit of the challenge - even if it was a tiny thing. 

The way I think about challenges - they are great but sometimes too much of a commitment for a particular person or time of their life. So one can "try it on" while they are happening - as you would try a shirt you might want to buy sometime in the future. It surely is different from doing a whole thirty drawings. But you might get a feel and perhaps even jot down some ideas for how to make it joyful and sustainable when the time comes and you are ready.

Here are some of my June examples - I've shared Jacaranda sketches and poppies before - but adding them here as an example for this particular conversation. 

 

One Week 100 People: 2024

This challenge (#oneweek100people) was organized and curated this year (again) by Liz Steel and Marc Taro Holmes. The idea is to give your people-sketching skills a little boost. There are no rules apart from what is in the name of this challenge. I did not set any specific rules for myself except to try and sketch people every day during the week and see how many I would end up with - no pressure to get to the number was my thing.

After I started with some passers-by whom I saw in the window on Monday I realized that I lived in the wrong place to find so many subjects and quickly devised a plan: I scanned my weekly plan for things that I planned to do anyway but which had a potential of seeing people and introduced a little extra time to those activities for sketching. Some of it was in person, some or online, some involved attending a lecture, some watching a sport. And I also looked into my options for aligning this with an idea of finding like-minded people - this is how I ended up joining pencils4tea on Thursday and Suhita's substack group on Friday. 

you can see all the results below - however number I got to I am happy to count this as a successful challenge - I drew more people, made a bunch of mistakes and tried to correct some and had fun along the way :) 

One Week 100 People: 2021

This challenge was organized and curated this year (again) by Liz Steel and Marc Taro Holmes. The idea of this little race is to give your people-sketching skills a boost. 

I think about it as an opportunity to remind myself how much I enjoy sketching people - even when they are not too excited about it :) 

Most of the people I interact with these days I see on the video calls - so I've done some of those:

 

And I did most of my work from the crazy-wonderful collages of Pelle Cass - trying to follow the story that he is weaving through the mash-up of these sporting events. I had a timer every time and did my best to look at the image more than at the paper. I tried find some rhythm in the way I re-shuffled figures for my collage, looking for simplified bodies.

I also found some people to draw from real life:

All in all - I did more than a hundred but I hope to work completely from life next year. Goes without saying that I miss the days when going to a cafe or library or standing on a street and sketching was easy and simple and something I would do in between other things. 

How did my "ONE WEEK 100 PEOPLE": Sketching Challenge (March 9-13, 2020) go.

Well, this year I was prepared (here is my plan).
But things didn't go as I planned.
And I did draw over 100 people but I cannot share quite a few of them. I knew that would be the case and planned to draw way more. But as coronavirus spread, the world around me was getting smaller and smaller and fewer and fewer places were available for sketching and more and more things had to be done before the inevitable shutdown of all the normal life.
So - here are a few of the 100 people:

Why I cannot share some of my sketches?
Those who follow my blog for some time probably noticed that there are no more sketches of the family members. This happened as per their request. I am drawing them daily but no longer making those sketches and notes public. (This means that I will not be posting a lot of things about my time during the quarantine - but I am thinking as to how to go about it).
Here is an example:

And I am very grateful for those who video chat with me regularly and are OK with me sharing these sketches (these people are also known as my endless supporters - my parents :)