Some time in the middle of September, a friend drew my attention to Inktober. Said she was going to do it herself, “though I’m completely hopeless at drawing.” (Which turned out to be untrue.) Like her, I thought I wasn’t good at drawing, and haven’t done much, other than in the way of doodles, for a long long time. In the days when I still tried to make visual aids for use in preaching, I was invariably unhappy with the results. And yet. I always wished I could draw. Wanted to draw. Felt it would be a good thing to do. So I signed up for Inktober.
It’s not an arduous or difficult thing to do. Rather less than NaNoWriMo, where you are supposed to register with the site, and have to submit your 50,000 words of text at the end to have the total verified, in order to be a ‘winner’. With Inktober, it’s only you who check up on yourself. The challenge is to post a drawing on social media (doesn’t matter which) on every day of October. 31 days, 31 drawings. The official website says
Every October, artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month.
I created Inktober in 2009 as a challenge to improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. It has since grown into a worldwide endeavor with thousands of artists taking on the challenge every year.
For those who want it, either because they lack inspiration (“But what can I draw?”) or because they want to make it more of a challenge, there is an official prompt list of single words to trigger creative thoughts. When I started, the prompt list was like unto a Zen koan to me, so that on the first two days I ignored the prompts and just posted two things I had felt like drawing. But then I got into the spirit of the thing – or perhaps the prompts got easier to understand – and I did my best to play the game. The prompts are broad and vague enough to have more than one meaning or interpretation, and that’s reflected in the different results the participating artists produce.
By now we’re just over halfway through. Most of my drawings have been done very quickly, very simply. I look at some of the pictures posted by others, and marvel at the intricacy, the detail, the time they must have spent on producing them. But it’s been immensely satisfying, and strangely addictive. I look back over three weeks, and I’m surprised by the variety of styles and methods I have used. And pleased with what feels like the progress I’ve made: my skills in some areas really seem to have improved. Is it annoying that my lightning sketches and throwaway attempts often look ‘better’ than the things I spend an hour on? Maybe. But it’s jolly interesting, too. It suggests that the more relaxed and loose I am about my drawing, the more fluent, the better the result.
I think I’m going to try and keep going, even when October ends.
Godspelled 