I recently found this exciting illustration challenge called '52 week Illustration Challenge' it's open to anyone and the only rule seems to be 'make something great'... I love their list of themes which they give ahead of time, for every week of the year. Their Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/418616991575037 features so many lovely creations from artists of all ages...

The challenge for week 14 was the word 'Camping'. I was inspired by my experience of camping as a child: the mysterious shapes of the trees and bushes when one looks at them in the dark, how loud all the insects are- and it feels like the whole world belongs to them.

I worked with colored pencils, this was partially because I started out just sketching (on scrap paper) but then it evolved into something I wanted to execute in color, when I tested on a different piece of the same kind of paper it became apparent that this paper could not handle any type of wet media, not even pens or markers (!) It's always worth taking a moment to test the paper you use and see what it will tolerate.