Mutation March 2018

The beginning of the madness! I can’t recall the precise moment I thought of “Mutation March,” but at some point I realized how much I enjoy drawing surreal animals and beasts, so why not lean into that. I had always liked the idea of those daily month-long art challenges, but often struggled to finish them. I asked around on social media for animals suggestions and compiled a finalized list with the simple instructions, “draw some animals, but make ‘em weird.” This gave me the predictable routine of a daily challenge and limited word prompt, but with the wildly open-ended playing field of surreal inspiration.

In addition to wanting to create a challenge that motivated me to see it to the end, my other mission was to see how many different ideas I could generate based on a single prompt in one day. I told myself to fill one sketchbook page per day with ideas. If I had the time and energy to do more, great! But at minimum, create three different concepts for each animal.

Special shout out to Rowyn and Rob of Team Manticore who joined in on this silly little project of mine and have been playing along each year since. <3