100 Heads Challenge | Become A Better Artist!

Are you up for a challenge?

Among all the art challenges, the 100 heads challenge has been one of the most popular ones recently.

Not only are these challenges fun to try, they also help you to become a better artist.

So let’s take a look at everything you need to know about the 100 heads challenge.

Are you ready?!

What is the 100 heads challenge?

The 100 heads challenge was originally started in 2019 by Ahmed Aldoori on his YouTube channel.

The idea is to draw 100 heads and/or portraits within 10 days. Which means you should draw 10 heads for 10 days straight.

This might sound easy to some. But drawing 100 heads is actually a lot of work. And not everyone can finish it.

However, if you do manage to successfully complete the challenge, you will probably notice a lot of improvement in your portraits. Especially if you are still a beginning artist that tries this challenge for the first time.

You can find the original video by Ahmed Aldoori below:

You can also find other artists on YouTube by searching for “100 heads challenge” or by using the hashtag #100headschallenge.

Or you can follow the challenge on Instagram by using the hashtag #meds100heads.

100 heads challenge rules

When you do the 100 heads challenge, you don’t have to worry about the rules too much.

The only rules to keep in mind are:

• Draw 100 heads in 10 days
• Use any style you want
• Use any medium you want

As Ahmed said in his original video explaining this challenge, there really aren’t any judges for this challenge and nobody will give you a certificate of completion afterwards.

This means it’s totally ok to be flexible with the rules.

The biggest problem for most people is the time restriction. It’s quite difficult to finish all 100 heads in 10 days.

If you are short on time, it’s totally fine to adjust the challenge for your circumstances. A lot of people choose to do a 50 heads challenge instead.

Moreover, there is no restriction on style. Like most artist, you probably have your own art style. So feel free to draw all heads in a realistic style, cartoon style, abstract style, etc.

This also means that you can use whatever art medium you want to. Although I would suggest choosing a medium you are already pretty familiar with, or else you might not be able to finish the challenge in time.

What you need

You can use whatever supplies you want. So you probably already have some art supplies lying around that you can use.

But if you want to try something new, here is a list of supplies you might want to try out:

• Sketchbook/journal
• Graphite pencils
• Colored pencils
• Charcoal
• Soft pastel
• Watercolor paint
• Art markers
• Acrylic paint
• Oil paint

As a beginner, using a cheap sketchbook with some graphite pencils with varying hardness is probably the easiest and fastest.

However, you can make any of these mediums work if you already have a good grasp of the basic techniques and can work fast enough.

100 heads challenge references

You don’t have to draw all 100 heads from memory.

Of course, you can do that if you want to. But most people use references to speed up the process and make sure that they have a wide variety of different heads to practice with.

Here are a few places where you can find references for the 100 heads challenge:

• Your personal photos
• Google Images
• Pinterest boards
• Unsplash
• AI generated faces

Drawing loved ones is always a great way to practice. And if the result looks great, you can even frame and gift it to your friends and family. So if you have taken any great photos of the people around you, you can use those as references.

If you don’t take a lot of photos yourself, you can also try to draw famous people. Google Images is a great way to find photos of your favorite actors, singers, YouTubers, etc.

When Ahmed Aldoori started this challenge, he prepared a Pinterest board with 100 different reference photos. However, a lot of these photos are actually pretty difficult to draw. So you might be better off searching on Pinterest for other references

Stock image sites are always a great way to find inspirations. Although there are a lot of these sites out there, I personally prefer to use Unsplash because they seem to have the highest quality images.

Finally, you could use AI generated faces as references as well. These faces are 100% unique and not just a combination of several images. And it’s almost scary to see how good the computer is at! Sometimes it gives a pretty bad result. But you can simply refresh the page until you see a face you like.

Completing the challenge

Finishing an art challenge like this takes a lot of effort. So you want to make sure you aren’t wasting your time.

Here are a few simple tips to finishes and make the most out of the 100 heads challenge.

• Use this challenge to start a daily habit of art journaling.
• Looking at other artist can be inspirational. But don’t compare yourself with others if it demotivates you.
• Know what you want to learn. You can draw 100 heads of only men, women, kids, elderly, etc.
• Focus on getting the proportions right, since they are the most important facial features
• Adjust the challenge to your time schedule. If 100 is too much you can do a 50 or even a 20 heads challenge.
• Experiment with colors and contrast if you are using paint to see what works best
• Compare your first and last portraits. This is a quick way to see how much progress you made over the past 10 days.