Inktober is a month long challenge that many artists take up to complete and post an ink drawing each during the month of October. I first heard about it last year, but lasted less than a week before I felt overwhelmed by the indecision of what to draw and gave up. This year I was determined to keep it up and to do a drawing for as many days as possible if not for the entire month.
I finished 27 drawings, which I think is a success considering that I traveled back to Vermont at the beginning of the month for my brother’s wedding!
I’m not going to lie. This was a tiring challenge, and there were times that I begrudged giving myself this task to complete, but I think overall that I am happy with the results. I have never been much of a sketcher. Although I have sketchbooks, and have filled some over the years, I am not the type to open a sketchbook and doodle.
The first few days of this month were more of a challenge in that I had to teach myself the size and detail level that I could reasonably complete in 1-3 hours (which is how long I gave myself to complete each piece. I work a full time job, and only have nights and weekends to work on my art, and knowing that I have other things I have to get done as well, I needed to limit the level of detail I would put into each piece). I am a perfectionist, and am likely to try to make a completed painting or drawing that looks perfect whenever I sit down, so it was hard for me to have more of a free style than usual. After the first few days I figured out these things and created some guidelines for myself that I stuck with for the rest of the month. I decided that each piece would be roughly 4” in diameter, and I would work with Micron Pens, Pitt Pens or black India ink where necessary, sticking mostly to drawing than painting because it is faster for me.
With those guidelines in mind I drafted a list of ideas I wanted to do, and went from there. I did some scenes from movies and shows that have influenced me, and also went through my personal collection of reference photos I’ve taken and chose ones that I would either do a small portion of as a sort of pre-work for a future painting, or chose some that I decided weren’t going to end up in a full sized painting down the line, but that I still wanted to draw.
In all, I enjoyed this project and am glad I did it. I’m definitely glad that it is done, and am looking forward to getting back to the paintings I was working on before this project took over. I am definitely going to keep up with a regular presence on Instagram though, as I found that this was the perfect push to get me to post more frequently, which I have been wanting to do for quite a while.
Below you will find a little collage of all of the images I created this month. I hope you enjoy!
