If you have never heard of it before, I will tell you now: Inktober is by far the coolest living challenge on the internet.
Created in 2009, the idea is fairly simply (as most good things are): to make one ink drawing a day during the entire month of October. There’s an official prompt, with one word per day as a drawing theme, but it’s up to you to follow it or not.
I felt brave enough to participate this year and I’ve found that the entire process has taught me a lot more than my usual go-with-the-flow routine.
As a self-taught drawer (“artist” is too strong a word for my sketching ventures) there are two main lessons I’ve learnt this past month:
1. Don’t draw on your work break
This is one of the problems with optimism. Sure, the image is simple and you have 15 or 20 minutes to spare – of course you can knock off your daily Inktober in such a short amount of time. You can, but it won’t be as good when you’re looking at your watch every 2 minutes.
2. DARE
There’s things I’m not that successful at drawing, so I never venture there in order to avoid frustration.
But I decided on a common theme for my Inktober (Stories) and – even if some of my image choices were a bit lazy – I had no way to escape: there were feet and hands, and heads in strange angles.
Lo and behold, I actually managed to do them and feel proud of the result.
“Leave your comfort zone” should be an embedded mantra by now, but one needs to be reminded from time to time.
All in all, it’s a terrific learning experience, heaps of fun and it felt great to finally finish the very last drawing – even more so, when your pattern is to always start and never complete.
Here’s a selection of the ones I am the most proud of and love dearly, imperfections and all:
Isidora Works 