June 2026 Art Challenge - Something Unexpected

Hello Krita Artists!

This month’s challenge was created by the May winner: @npc.

Draw any scene of your liking, be it a landscape, cityscape, a room or just a place, and add something unexpected! Something that you wouldn’t expect to see in a given scene, like a giraffe’s head popping up behind suburban buildings.

Optional Challenge

Use Krita’s adjustment and filter tools in the top menu to alter or enhance your picture.


Please post only artworks and discussion related to submitted artwork in this thread. There is a WIP thread for each monthly art challenge in which you can ask questions and post your works in progress (WIPs).

June 2026 Art Challenge – WIP and Discussion Thread

Rules

  • The composition must be created from scratch and should be your own and not an exact copy from someone or somewhere else. If you are using a reference photo taken by anyone other than yourself, please ensure the license allows for its use and include a credit to the photographer with your submission. No paint-over or tracing allowed.

  • Photobashing is allowed only when explicitly specified in the topic.

  • Artwork should be at least 90% Krita. Example: 3D bases made in Blender (or other non-AI app) are allowed as long as you made the 3D scene yourself.

  • The theme changes every month. Your submission should be somehow related to the theme. If possible, please add a few lines explaining your idea and image.

  • No AI-generated images are allowed, not even partial use of AI for composition ideas or paint over. It is unfair for those who are drawing from scratch.

  • You can post a maximum of 3 entries and also edit the entries until the deadline.

  • In order to have the image featured, the entries need to be safe for work so please avoid any NSFW or controversial content. The moderators can use their discretion to disqualify the image from the contest with prior notice. Of course, the artist will be given the chance to submit an alternate image or change it up until the deadline.

  • Please do not post your submissions in any other category on Krita-Artists until voting has closed and the winner has been declared.

How to Enter

Post each submission as a reply in this thread – one image per post.
Submissions will be accepted until 2026-06-26T18:00:00Z, at which time the topic will automatically close. You can check how much time is left at the bottom of the thread.

Voting

We will hold a poll at the end of the challenge period. Each submission will be voted on individually. The artwork with the highest percentage of votes will be the winner

Prize

The winner will be featured on this website in the featured artwork row and will have the privilege to set the next topic of their liking. If the winner is not available or reachable, then the 1st runner up will be asked to provide the topic and challenge. The winner will also be awarded the Monthly Art Contest Winner badge.

Please spread the word about this art challenge by posting your artwork on various social media websites with the hashtag #KritaChallenge. If possible, include a link to the forum post.

I hope we will enjoy this exercise so let us begin!

P.S. We can change the rules based on the feedback on this contest and modify the format. Any suggestions are welcome. To submit feedback, please create a new topic in the Site Feedback category.

14 Likes

“The Ice Sorbet Vendor”

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On a hot summer day on the beach, there is nothing just like a freshly frozen Ice Sorbet!

Always made from fresh fruits and berries of finest qualities, and of course carefully prepared, processed and shock-frosted on the spot by our trusted Ice Sorbetvendors!

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Students of the arcane arts have a variety of ways to earn some money on the side, depending heavily on their chosen specialization. Those adapt in the summoning of cold and ice find easy employment in various roles in the food industry.

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Full disclosure: I worked on this sporadically since end of april (when we had the first warm days of the year), and finished it today. It is fully coincidence that it fits this month’s challenge. In case this makes it ineligible for the challenge, so be it.

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Regarding the optional challenge, I used the G’MIC-Qt “Deformations > Crease” filter as help to create the magic-effects, following this tutorial.

11 Likes

Unofficial title: “Sermon on the lake”.
Made from scratch in Krita, by me, this was the first “serious” image I made in Krita, and the largest so far.
Back story: this image was originally made as a free “commission” for a friend who has a website about Christianity, but I really sized it for print. Jesus liked teaching from an anchored boat, which offered better acoustics. I discovered that in Israel they excavated and then reconstructed an ancient boat, and I used their model as reference. Then I used aerial photographs of Chicago lakefront for a correct color palette, and placed reflections of random (but real-life) hi-rise buildings from the city. But the biggest challenge was to create all the individual characters on the beach, I tried to imagine their own backgrounds as I was drawing them, and some of them are real people I met. Enough said, took me a while…
Enjoy the summer!

21 Likes

If that isn’t unexpected, then I really don’t know!

Michelist

2 Likes

For this entry, I thought about making a cutesy pastel-colored character with the pixel art brush, and I made a dark, moody environment so that she would intentionally stick out.

16 Likes

“When life throws you a curved ball”

It’s been more than a decade since I last drew. As the title suggests, here I am after I found Krita and this post. Cheers to midlife crisis! -derp-

20 Likes

Well done and welcome, @mugen33!

2 Likes

Thank you :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Title: The Unexpected

Sub Title: The Height of Frustration

It’s a play on wording. We’ve all had those days, when you just throw up your hands and say why. Here’s what it looks like.

12 Likes

Omg that is such good wordplay.

2 Likes

Here is my attempt for this month. Server attacked by an elf.

Still need to learn a lot for how Krita works and to remember how to draw but eventually slowly but surely I will get better.

I would like to thank to @sognidigitali for the constructive feedback and the ideas what to improve in my composition.

21 Likes

Just for a bit of fun! :blush:

19 Likes

My second entry: “Cutting the Wedding Cake”

Everybody said they wouldn’t fit together.
Everybody said their families would never get along.
Everybody said it would surely end in tragedy.
They proved everybody wrong.

But because neither cats nor mice are able to wield a large knife, special arrangements had to be implemented to cut the cake.

14 Likes

Unexpected surprise. Oh yeah, I have arachnophobia :laughing:

20 Likes

This soon to come experience reminds me of a night many years ago, I was 16 or 17, and up until then I’d never been afraid of spiders, no matter what kind or size. I’d even played with a good friend’s tarantulas and bird spiders.
Well, one night I woke up in the middle of a nightmare because I thought I’d heard a “pop” sound, and I automatically turned on the light right away. And the moment it got bright, I saw the source of that “pop” sound - a spider, about three to four centimeters long, not quite one centimeter in diameter, and with a leg span of a good eight to ten centimeters - that had fallen onto the comforter over my stomach from the sloped ceiling. Once we’d both adjusted to the light, the spider suddenly started running straight toward my face, scurried across my face, and then scurried over the roughly one-meter-high partition that separated the sleeping area from the living area of my room.
Ever since that very night, I’ve sometimes - though not always - been afraid of larger spiders.

Michelist

5 Likes

Oh my goodness! I hope I never have to go through anything like that! :scream:
The only spider I can tolerate is Spider-Man:blush:

5 Likes

I can not stop wondering if the spider will crawl over the edge and dip one leg in the coffee :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Broken mug in 3… 2… 1…

:sweat_smile:

5 Likes


I have started it mere day after the challenge was announced, was about 90% done within a few days, then I just sat on it for weeks trying to “improve” it. Yeah, I have finally given up and decided to post it (especially as I have a different idea which I might or might not finish in time)

12 Likes

Cat drooling over a planet

12 Likes