The Inktober 2018 Challenge

Last year was the first year I participated in Inktober. It was a transformative experience and I had grown so much from it.

That is why I am doing it this year again. 

Have you ever heard of a person needs 30 days to build a habit? (The actual time could be varied* but you get the idea.) It turns out; boot camp challenges like Inktober do exactly that.

At first, I was thinking about tackling it one day at a time as it comes. However, seeing how excited other artists are about it, I decided to put more heart in it and did some planning two weeks before Inktober.

Two weeks prior Inktober

The first step was setting mental notes. I confessed, doing thumbnails is not really my thing, but it is probably the best way to go to keep track and manage 31 ideas all at once.

I was so glad I did. Those ideas continued to grow, and I spent the weeks on finding photo references, defining compositions and art styles. For example, Am I going with lines only? What skills and patterns I should go with to set grayscale? Should I do wash or add color? Etc.

This year I set my theme as Creative Storm. Some days I followed the official prompts list and some days I don’t.

Week 1 and Week 2

In the first week of Inktober, it was mainly to warm up and to be in touch with my current capabilities.  Here are some of the best from the first two weeks -

During this time, I learned more about my creative flow – In my case, it is pretty much work like a rechargeable battery and creating daily is not my natural flow.

I tend to create 1 to 2 really good ones together within a day. I also learned that I need better skill with lights and shades, so that will be what I am focusing on next.

Week 3 and Week 4

I admitted the first two weeks was hard and exhausting, but it became more natural day after day, thanks to these coordination practices of the cerebellum. My creation time also drastically reduced a lot. Here are some of the best one from these weeks -

Finally, the last one of this Inktober !

You can see the creative note for each painting here.