I recently learnt about this cool drawing challenge called Inktober. The gist of it is that you draw something every day for the month of October. There aren’t really any rules except for trying to stick to using ink as your drawing medium.
Initially this didn’t really intrigue me. Funny enough, this is exactly the reason I did become intrigued. I have always said that I can’t draw… So this seems like a perfect opportunity to try to change that. I don’t expect my drawing skill to get better over night, but I believe that using this time to learn some good technique and get practice in will allow me to improve. Definitely more than doing nothing. I know that there are going to be some amazing artworks put out there by artists taking part in this drawing challenge so to avoid myself getting demotivated, I have decided to write this blog posts to outline what I am hoping to achieve with this challenge.
I am doing this for myself. I am not expecting to become the next Picasso or Frida Kahlo, or make money from drawing at all. Whenever I have whiteboarding sessions with dev teams, I end up using basic illustrations to carry points across. It would be great if I could get better at visualizing things and drawing them to communicate something. Hopefully I can draw things that look more like clouds, mobile phones and server racks rather than odd scribbles 😂.
I commit to posting my progress on my blog every time I practice. Once again, this is for myself. This will allow me to look back at the first few days and compare my starting point with where I am at the end of the challenge. This may also be a sneaky attempt at trying to start a habit of adding to my blog more frequently.
I would like to try drawing as a form of meditation. Everyone needs to find what works for them and I have had little luck with traditional meditation. Granted, I didn’t try a 31 day meditation challenge but I find it very difficult to say no to a challenge, so I am going to make the most of Inktober to maximise my personal growth. Personal time to think is very important and I think that this challenge forces me to take time out of my normal routine to spend on myself. This should have a positive effect, but if I feel as though I am putting myself under additional, unnecessary strain then I am not going to be too hard on myself about slowing down with the challenge.
In preparation for the challenge, I have gotten myself a really nice brush pen (Pentel Pocket Brush) and two multi-media pads; One smooth and one with a natural grain texture.
If you’re reading this and have reached this far, I’m sorry for my incoherent ramblings. I find it extremely useful to put words to goals and feel that putting this on my blog will increase my motivation and drive to make it through the challenge.
To all the artists taking part in Inktober: Good luck!