30 Days. 30 Sketches. One Corrie Liotta.

By Porter Metzler on August 19, 2020

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Sometimes it can be difficult to get the creative juices flowing, especially when we are entering month 5 of staying at home and we’re all feeling a little drained. But, if you ask any artist/musician/creative what the key to success is, they’ll probably say… Create. Every. Day.

Just like going to the gym, sometimes your best creative days are the ones where you really don’t want to do the task at hand. Corrie Liotta knows a little something about that.

Corrie committed herself to complete a 30-day drawing challenge created by artist Kat Schneider. Each day offered a new prompt to get the creative ball rolling. The one-to-two word drawing prompts were a starting point, but the interpretation was left to the individual artist.

Putting the work “out there”

“It’s good for me to put my work out there so that I actually follow through on personal projects that don’t have a deadline or any expectations from someone else,” said Corrie on sharing her work.

Kat Schneider’s Challenge Board

Just like the name suggests, this 30-day drawing challenge is… well… a challenge. And, it was a little scary.

“I was mostly afraid I wouldn’t finish it! That’s my fear when I start almost any project for myself–feeling like I’ll reach a point where I won’t find any more excitement in the work, or I won’t find a reason to keep it going,” said Corrie.

But, keep it going she did, learning more about herself as an artist along the way.

“I’m learning to trust myself more with the uncomfortable stages of a piece! Some of my favorite pieces in this challenge went through some pretty ugly stages before they started to look acceptable to me. If you trust yourself and keep working with it, you find it eventually!”

The result was 30 beautiful and unique pieces that came straight from the artistic mind of Corrie Liotta.

What happens on day 31?

When Corrie isn’t busy tackling drawing challenges, creating stellar Zoom backgrounds of Charlotte scenery, or making free coloring pages, she’s hard at work being the author and illustrator for wonderfully charming children’s books. She is following up her first book, The Appropriate Pirate, with another illustrated marvel about the alphabet and why our differences as humans should be celebrated.

“Like the letters in the alphabet, every one of us is different, but also part of something greater. We all have talents and abilities and thoughts and feelings that make us unique. Like the alphabet, we function best as a society when we work together toward a common goal. To exclude one of us, like to remove a letter from the alphabet, is to limit what we can accomplish,” said Corrie on her latest book.

She’s still in the early stages of the creative process, but you can follow along on her writing and creative journey by becoming a member of her Patreon. While you eagerly await Corrie’s next book, you can check out her 30-day challenge drawings below.