My Inktober Experience: How I Completed The Month-Long Art Challenge
This year, for the first time, I decided to join the Inktober drawing challenge. I passionately experimented with new materials and made a lot of drawings over the past October, so in today’s post, I’m sharing with you my results and thoughts on this challenge.
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What is Inktober?
Inktober is an art challenge focused on improving drawing skills and techniques throughout October. It is a really global movement, and each year a new prompt list is released on the official Inktober Instagram account to help artists find inspiration and drawing ideas for the challenge. There are 31 drawing prompts in total, one prompt is one drawing. Today, there are plenty of different art challenges on social media, and generally, all of them have one major rule - draw every day and just have fun.
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What is my motivation
to take part in Inktober?
When I think about this question, a lot of answers come to my mind. But in fact, I’d like to highlight just 2 main reasons for joining Inktober this year:
• I wanted to draw simple quick illustrations more often
• I wanted to try wax crayons as a new drawing tool for my sketchbook habit
Overcoming Perfectionism
In general, when I start working on a new digital illustration, I draw with a specific product in mind. Making a lot of art for my creative business is a very common thing for me, but sometimes I am too much of a perfectionist with my illustrations. For me, drawing in my free time is an opportunity to let myself stop thinking of the final result too much. I joined Inktober to draw whatever I want more often without any pressure and any worries about creating a “great art”. I was focusing on drawing something simple all month long. And as a result, I really enjoyed the process of playing with art materials and even of making mistakes.
Trying new art materials
This year, I’ve been practicing acrylic painting a lot during my free time, but I also wanted to try new dry drawing media, such as crayons and pastels. I often wondered if I can create colorful illustrations working with tools that do not require water at all. So Inktober was my chance to stop procrastinating and finally try new art supplies.
In the beginning, working with crayons was challenging for me, and even a single, simple drawing took hours to finish. However, a week later, with everyday drawing, I gradually became more confident in making each stroke and line on paper. I let go of my worries about “how to draw” and started to trust some randomness and spontaneity during the drawing process. And at the end of the month, I absolutely overcame my fear of drawing with crayons. I’m still amazed!
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Rules Breaking
To make Inktober more fun, I decided to change some rules of the challenge into something that I enjoy. Let’s talk about two of them.
Does Inktober have to be black and white?
I used to think that making black-and-white drawings in Inktober is crucial. That’s why I have never participated in this challenge before. Only this year I finally reread the Inktober guidelines carefully and then allowed myself to think broader. As it turned out, one of the main things about Inktober is to observe what artists can create with just several drawing tools and a very limited color palette. It doesn’t matter what those tools are. Even Inktober admitted that “the spirit of the challenge is very open to people being creative in what tools they use, how they use them, and what they create.”
When I realized that I actually could draw with anything, I immediately made my own simple rule: create all my drawings in monochrome shades of blue or yellow. These two colors were the main element that tied together all my Inktober drawings. So every day I sat down, picked a topic, and started drawing in a blue color scheme or in a yellow one, depending on my mood.
Is it OK not to post online every day?
Of course, Inktober suggests sharing new drawings on Instagram every day for the entire month to meet and network with other artists. But is this necessary? To be honest, I had to make an effort over myself to bypass this “post every day” rule. I often reminded myself that it’s important to focus on what I wanted to get from the challenge instead of what the challenge wanted to get from me.
The thing I don’t like about posting online every single day is that the process is time-consuming for me. Instead of investing my free precious time in drawing and practicing, I have to think every day about how to take a great photo of my drawing, use the right hashtags, and so on. These things are not in line with my initial goals. Therefore, I just wanted to create more art and finish Inktober without getting burnt out by the end of the month.
So I tried to find my own pace during Inktober. Sometimes I could skip several days and then made two or three drawings the next time. Commonly, I focused on a slow drawing before bedtime, but sometimes I was able to make several quick drawings in the morning at home or in a cafe. I didn’t pressure myself to come up with something astonishing: just simple ideas that are relevant to the drawing challenge list. My drawing practice was just for me at that moment. The creative flow like that allowed me to stay motivated and keep on drawing.
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Materials I used during Inktober
My Art Supplies
These are my favorite art supplies I used during Inktober:
Caran D'ache "Neocolor II" Wax Crayons
Winsor & Newton A5 Drawing Block (smooth grain, 220g)
Derwent Pastel Sharpener
Koh-i-Noor Elephant Eraser
Staedtler Graphite Pencil (2B)
Staedtler Lumograph Black Pencil (2B)
Color Swatches of Caran d’Ache Wax Crayons
For those who would like to try Caran d’Ache “Neocolor II” wax crayons, I also made this color chart of 24 colors to show their tint. I’ve got a big range of cool shades and a more modest set of warm colors. All of them were purchased individually.
Cool Colors: Silver Grey, Light Grey, Grey, Light Cobalt Blue (Hue), Turquoise Blue, Light Blue, Dark Grey, Malachite Green, Greyish Black, Payne Grey, Charcoal Grey
Neutral Colors: Black, White, Beige, Umber, Sepia
Warm Colors: Sahara Yellow, Flesh, Orangish Yellow, Golden Ochre, Golden Yellow, Raw Siena, Cinnamon, Toledo Brown
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Final Thoughts
Of course, daily drawing is not as easy as it seems. By the third week of October, I had become acutely aware of just how long the month was. Sometimes there were drawings that I didn’t like very much. Nonetheless, I know I’ve learned something from every piece I’ve created. Doing Inktober allowed me to know a bit more about the new ways to express myself and why I enjoy drawing. It was a great opportunity for inspiration, growth, and just enjoying the process.
🍊 Questions For You: Which Inktober drawing do you like the most here? Have you ever participated in a social media challenge (art challenge, reading challenge, writing challenge, or any other sort of activity)? Share in the comments!
Thank you so much for reading along and being here!
Daria Danilova
artist, illustrator, graphic designer
