Round two of my art competition is a straight-up sculpture drawing battle in my studio: 45 minutes to draw a sculpture, but with a brutal constraint—pen + ink brushes only, so there’s no erasing and nowhere to hide. The artists get to choose their subject from four options: a plaster cast bust, a silicone cyclops mask, a mini Greek god sculpture, or a sunny angel. Watching them pick was half the fun: one artist grabbed the Cyclops because they hit the Met every week and wanted those shadow shapes, another went Roman/Paris vibes, and someone else was hyped to “have a lot of fun” with the sunny angel. Then the timer starts and it’s all process. One artist leans into gentle, tiny details. Another starts with a wash because that’s their watercolor comfort zone—risking highlights early, then punching in darks later. Someone else goes conceptual and admits they’re basically freeballing it, building wash first and then tightening with fineliner. When pens go down, the post-mortems are honest: people wishing for darker darks, missing white paint for pop, learning the hard way that a water brush can wreck a piece, and realizing overworking can make a drawing worse. That’s the real takeaway: constraints don’t just make it spicy—they expose your habits fast and make you improve faster.