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Art Challenge: Draw This in Your Style!

2025.01.29 | by Kailyn Chu

Very recently, I surpassed 500 followers on Instagram and 50 subscribers on Youtube. As a way to celebrate and to thank everyone for following me on those platforms, I decided to host a Draw This in Your Style Challenge.

DTIYS Challenges

More commonly referred to as DTIYS challenges, they are meant to challenge other artists to interpret a character or theme in their own art style. As the name suggests, the host artist draws something of their choice, and then shares it to the endless void that is the internet, where it will hopefully be picked up by the art community. Thousands of different DTIYS challenges can be found just by searching social media platforms with #dtiys.

Different artists may have different rules for their challenges, but at its core, the challenge is about encouraging others to play around with the prompt, to see how a single idea can have many unique interpretations.

Zeni Castor is a 21 year old Kothi (her alien race) fashion design student at the Cordia School of Arts. She is also an influencer, who is all about self expression through her wardrobe. She is constantly looking for new and fun ways to change her appearance. She loves exploring trends from different planets, and sharing them on the galactic cybernet. Zeni also dreams of becoming a famous fashion designer and having her own brand one day.

Meet Zeni Castor

I chose my original character Zeni as the subject of my DTIYS challenge. She is a character I created for one of my classes about graphic novel illustration (Read Zeni’s Adventures), and one I thought was in need of a design refresh. So I took this opportunity to update Zeni’s design, as well as her backstory.

You see, Zeni was a self-insert type of character that I created under the time limitations of university due dates, so I wasn’t able to give her much thought beyond her appearance. In doing some scrolling on Pinterest for this project, I found myself looking at a lot of futuristic and “weird” fashion. So the obvious thing to do was to make Zeni a fashion design student. Borrowing some abandoned ideas from another sci-fi themed project, Zeni’s story began to come together.

Participate in this DTIYS challenge

Want to join in on the fun? Participate by drawing Zeni, in a fun fashionable outfit. Or you could also just redraw her the way I've done it. I've included an extra character reference. Making your entry look like a magazine cover is optional (but I'd love to see it.)

If you post your entry online: