30 Faces/30 Days - Pencil (2026)

✏️ The Challenge: Draw the human face in pencil every day for 30 days, starting January 1, 2026.

✍️ Start the new year on a drawing streak! Improve your skills, one face at a time, with six inspiring teachers and hundreds of fellow participants.

♾️ Get lifetime access with purchase. Go at your own pace. Revisit forever. 

👇 How It Works

Each day of the challenge, you get a reference photo featuring an inspiring face and a video lesson on Sktchy. Watch the lesson, draw your muse and share your drawing with a global community of fellow participants.

• 30 video drawing lessons (~60 mins/lesson)
• 30 inspiring reference photos
• Six extraordinary teachers

🔓 Unlock the Power of the Pencil

The pencil is humble—and unstoppable. It’s the most accessible tool in your studio, and the one with the most potential.

With a pencil, you can capture any face.

In this 30-day challenge, six extraordinary portrait artists will guide you—day by day, face by face—to sharpen your skills and transform your drawing. We'll cover:

 • Practical tips for overcoming fear of the blank page
 • Finding and using big shapes to set your portrait up for success
 • Capturing likeness through accurate proportions, the Loomis method, etc.
 • Facial anatomy
 • Drawing subjects at challenging angles
 • Hatching and blending
 • Line quality and expressive mark making
 • Observation skills
 • Using focal points, composition, and lighting to create an interesting portrait even in low-contrast reference photos
 • And much more!

Learn from six extraordinary graphite artists from around the world.

Alex Cooper (Sktchy, Instagram) is a largely self-taught portrait artist working in oils, pencil, and charcoal.

A commissioned artist with work held in private collections in the UK, Norway, New Zealand, France, Germany, and the United States, she participated in Season 8 of Portrait Artist of the Year in 2021 and regularly exhibits across the UK through open calls.

She keeps an active sketchbook wherever she goes—on trains, in cafés, on holiday, and at home—drawing whenever there’s a spare moment.

Alyssa Marie Johnson (Sktchy, Instagram) is a self-taught American artist. Through line and shade she focuses on capturing the unique features and personality of her subjects.

She started cultivating a daily ritual of drawing over the past few years and has found great joy in the pursuit of bettering her artistic abilities, and also the connection to communities of other artists and muses.

Darren Wells (Sktchy, Instagram) is a portrait artist based in Sydney, Australia. After a career in writing, editing, and creative direction across media and marketing, he has devoted himself fully to making art.

Working primarily in graphite and charcoal, he draws inspiration from both classic and contemporary artists, championing the purity and directness of simple materials. His work demonstrates that art doesn’t need to be complicated—these traditional mediums are accessible to beginners and endlessly challenging for professionals.

Most recently, Darren appeared as a competitor in the Australian series of Portrait Artist of the Year.

David Tenorio (Sktchy, Instagram) is an illustrator and art instructor in the Bay Area, California. He has taught art for 15+ years to students of all ages, including serving as an art mentor to clients at Pixar, Disney and SF Film.

Additionally, David has helped place numerous high school students at the nation's leading art programs including Art Center, CalArts and RISD. His specialties include sketchbook techniques, figure drawing and entertainment design.

Milla Weideman (Sktchy, Instagram) is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia. She works primarily with portraits and the figure, drawn to the challenge of truly seeing and capturing the people around her. Rather than idealize or flatter, her goal is to represent subjects as they uniquely appear in her eyes.

Her practice spans both drawing and painting—each strengthening the other—and throughout all of her work she is grounded in fundamentals such as value relationships, geometric structure, and simplification.

Tiffany S. DaVanzo (Sktchy, Instagram) is a professional medical illustrator specializing in art for medical publications, education and the medical legal field.

She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Art as Applied to Medicine Program, and a member of the Association of Medical Illustrators since 2001.

Tiffany lives in East Tennessee with her husband and two daughters.

30-Day Challenge, Lifetime Access

As a participant, you get lifetime access to all challenge content (videos, photos, etc.) on Sktchy, where you can communicate with your teachers and connect with fellow participants from around the world via desktop and any iOS or Android mobile devices.

FAQs

What materials do I need to participate?

The only materials you need are pencil and paper. That said, here are the specific materials the teachers use in their lessons:

• Pencil: lead (2B-8B, 2H, HB); mechanical (2B, 4B, HB); colored (various colors)
• Paper: white/light and, optionally, toned
• Eraser
• Optional: charcoal powder; paint brush; shading stick; stencils

Is the content all new?

Yes! The teachers created their video lessons specifically for this edition of the challenge.

What skill level do I need for this challenge?

The challenge is suitable for artists of all skill levels, from beginners on up. 

Do I need an iOS-device to participate?

No! We are hosting the challenge on Sktchy, which is available on iOS, Android and web.

Where do I access the challenge?

We publish all content related to the challenge on Sktchy.

Do I get lifetime access to the challenge?

Yes! Your purchase gets you lifetime access to ALL challenge content.

What is your refund policy?

Get a full refund, with no questions asked, within 24 hours of purchase.

Any Questions?

Contact us. We'll reply asap.