Three Materials Challenge 2026: Spend a week with your sketchbook

It’s summer and time for the Three Materials Challenge. It’s co hosted by me, Kathryn Boyt and Naomi Tipping.

Here’s the information:

• 1-7th August 2026

• Draw everyday from life

• Draw for no longer than 30 mins

• Use 3 materials eg. 3 pens or a crayon, a pen and a paint stick. You can prep your page if you want to add more texture to the blank page.

• Post on Instagram with the hashtag #3materialsdrawingchallenge

  There are now 23K posts with that hashtag!

How did it start?

Kathryn Boyt set herself a challenge to draw every day so that she could make time for creative work in the school holidays.

It’s now the fourth year of the challenge being cohosted by Kathryn, me and Naomi. The length of the challenge has varied - one year it was 100 days!

But a week this year will be more manageable and, we thought, might encourage more people to join.

Why join?

• Make time for creativity every day

• Experiment and play

• Share your work and be inspired

The biggest surprise for me was how I felt after the challenge knowing that I had captured the summer in my sketchbooks. Those drawings are full of memories - who I was with, what the weather was like, how I felt. My sketchbook replaced my camera.

The sketch is the priority

There are guidelines to the challenge, to help limit procrastination caused by deciding between infinite amounts of materials and colours, but the priority is always the drawing. If I’m enjoying drawing, I’ll spend longer than 30 minutes. If it needs another material, I’ll add it.

There’s no pressure to post either - the drawing and the creative act is the focus of the challenge. But if you do want to post or look at the hashtag, it is really lovely to see all the sketches pop up each day and be inspired by others. The constraint of using 3 materials makes people layer and experiment with combinations. I’ve learned so much about materials and colour through taking part in the challenge.

If you’d like to find out more, I’ll be posting a sketchbook and materials tour for my paid subscribers later in the month. I’ll look at themes, inspiration and talk about the dusty materials I finally dug out and started using. The archive now has over 20 sketchbook tours you can access.

In the meantime, here is a look at the first ten days of sketches that I posted in the challenge last year.

Want to find out more?

Ask any questions in the comments below.