Conflicted over Inktober

Kristin Wauson

@Nyrryl-Cadiz thank you! My book is sort of a fractured fairytale. It's called Mr. Thatcher's House and it's about a rabbit who is obsessed with building the perfect house, but no matter how hard he works on it, something is missing. Eventually it grows so big that homeless fairytale characters start coming to the door and they want to live there too. The house becomes chaotic and he is very stressed about it and has to decide what to do.

ArtofAleksey

@Kristin-Wauson i always see people utilize the inktober excitement and prompts for so many creative things. I saw people use them to try out ink washes instead of lines, some people used it to write poetry! What? It was cool though. There are no rules on what you can do, and the rules that people impose on it are arbitraryy yayy. So if you want to do pencil sketches I support it

Also the book sounds very fun i hope the bunny lets all the homeless critters live there

Kristin Wauson

@Aleksey all good points! Maybe I will just use the prompts and do my own thing. I was excited when I read them. I have never seen Inktober poetry! That’s kind of cool. And don’t worry, the story does have a happy ending!

Coley

@Nyrryl-Cadiz how are you doing inktober? In your usual style? I'm curious because I am confused LoL. I'm learning inking now but not sure I'm truly a line girl! Time will tell as this is all new to me.

NessIllustration

@Kristin-Wauson The pressure over Inktober has been growing year by year, it's like each year we got to top the last! There's more and more elaborate pictures that we see, so much so that people prepare months in advance. But if it's too much, it's too much! I've seen people scale down and do smaller stuff, and that's great too! I think last year I saw this one artist do a tiny ink doodle of a cactus each day of October. Must have taken her maybe 10 minutes per day tops. If you're stressing yourself out and ending up at the PT over it, it's time for you to scale it down. Be reasonable about what you can and want to achieve for Inktober. And if you're only doing it because all the cool kids are doing it, re-evaluate whether you should give it a place in your life or not.

ArtofAleksey

@Kristin-Wauson I agree with what @NessIllustration says, it can get overwhelming! I try to keep things simple and do a spot illustration, last year I did a chicken bottle (A bottle in the shape of a chicken) for the prompt was "chicken" nothing complicated but it was mainly for me to explore how to draw glass bottles in different shapes. It looked cool at the end but it wasn't gonna blow anyones mind. It was just fun. Theres a photo of it below, and I did a little bird carrying a giant fish for "weak" which was silly and fun and I learned how to draw a decent fish. I did all 31 prompts and posted them all on instragram. Then after inktober was over, I looked them all over and kept the ones I was happy with, and deleted the ones that I wasn't that happy with (a lot haha) but I used inktober mainly to learn how to draw things. Ink was just the victim for me to improve my drawing skills.

Theres SOOO many skilled inkers that are going to get more attention than I am so I didnt care about that. Some day when I'm close to their level of skill maybe I'll care more.

Heres the chicken and bird-fish drawings to help you and anyone else that may be feeling overwhelmed:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpFEWh-hv1O/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo8LN3IhJvK/

Also part of the fun is seeing people RUSH a few of them at the end of inktober (you can totally tell sometimes) and get a chuckle out of it. Mine definitely will come out sloppier at the end, but I'm curious to see what will end up on the paper.

APHOTICMOTH

Do it if you want, but don't let it burden you.

I only participated for the first time last year. If you go to my IG, and scroll to the bottom, all those first pieces are Inktober, it's why I finally opened my IG.

I did most of them in ballpoint, spent between 3 - 20 mins or so on each. I did it for fun, and made almost all of them humorous. It's obvious I rushed them, and some ended up pretty boring, but I wasn't doing it to gain fame, it was more about "Can I come up with unique ideas??". It still was a good exercise. I plan on doing it this year, and putting in a bit more effort, but still keep them simple small spots.

Coreyartus

I tried inking digitally for the first time last year, and got through about 12 days of Inktober before I stopped. I simply had to let it go--my day job demanded more time in October than I could allocate to participating.

It took a long time for me to come to the conclusion that stopping was okay, because I really felt I'd crashed and burned and failed. I felt like, if I couldn't even do Inktober how could I possibly be able to handle being a professional? And since everyone else seems to be doing it around their professional responsibilities, what does that say about me?

It has taken me a year to come to the understanding that Inktober is what you want it to be. Seeing Jake's personable nature in the SVSLearn videos has (somehow, for whatever reason) given me "permission" to realize that he's simply wanting people to play and explore and maybe discover something new. That's all. And if you want to turn it into a "thing" (however you want to use it), hey--he's down with whatever. It's not like this thing is like playing with fire. Some people use it to deep dive into practicing their skills, some use it to promote themselves, some use it to try something new, some for... well, whatever. It's all good.

And it's all up to you. I wonder if the "pressure" one might feel to participate isn't necessarily strictly about Inktober as much as it's about seeing a whole bunch of artists pile on to something and feeling pressured to participate or be left out. Sorta like <big booming voice> "POST ON INSTAGRAM CONSTANTLY" is a thing for artists...

I'm gonna do maybe one a week, I dunno. If one of the prompts tickles my fancy I may play. But that's it. I have a very busy schedule and there ain't no time for guilt. I think we can all agree Jake would be the FIRST one to urge you to not let it turn into that. It's awesome that so many have the opportunity to do it, and wonderful they choose to invest so much into it. Kudos to them. I, personally, just can't be one of those folks. And I, for one, am really REALLY gonna enjoy being stimulated by all the incredible creativity being spawned. It's gonna be fun to sit back and watch the feed, ya know? I mean, who else can appreciate the artistry like we fellow artists, right? That's my hope this year: to be a phenomenal cheerleader. I'm looking forward to that.

Phil Cullen

I definitely relate to what you're saying. congrats on the book dummy the story sounds wonderful, best of luck with the submissions.

I suggest doing what you like, if you do it in pencil and post it, you will most likely get haters who will love to point out what you did, so just get a biro and sign your name in ink.

Ask yourself why you want to do it and see does it line up or detract from your goals. Social media can be great but there can also be this dark side to it, i'm not talking negative comments but more the reason you're making art, is it just to have something to post that day? That's something I fell into, I tried the 100 day project and by day 50 I just dropped out, I was burnt out and was asking myself why I was doing it, it was just a source of stress for me.

If you can participate with out it being highly stressful go for it and if you just do 1 or 2 days, awesome. Last year was the first year I completed inktober, it's also the first year I said to myself, I might not do every day and i'm fine with that. So I was more relaxed and some of the sketches were just little doodles.

Miriam

@Aleksey, good insights & thanks for sharing your picts. The expression on the tiny bird made me laugh.

Nyrryl Cadiz

@Coley hi! I’m using my style. No inking whatsoever. I imagine they’ll be backlash from this so I plan to disclose this at the beginning at of the month They can like it or hate it but I’m making art everyday for the rest of Inktober.

Coley

@Nyrryl-Cadiz I love your style so I'm looking forward to it!

ArtofAleksey

@Miriam said in Conflicted over Inktober:

@Aleksey, good insights & thanks for sharing your picts. The expression on the tiny bird made me laugh.

Mission accomplished

Susan Marks

@JerrySketchyArt I haven’t heard of the 5k approach. Is it a “thing” or simple and magnificently your take on it?
I did it last year and had the expected joys and challenges. I’m planning on it doing it this year. I may choose 4 of my drawings and sketch ink one/week, doing a bit different style (and practice) every day.

What was hardest for me was creating the image every day. Yet that was what pushed me the most in a positive result. I think I just don’t have that amount of time this year.

Heather Boyd

@Kristin-Wauson

Hi, you are okay and you are not alone.

I have been struggling with whether to do inktober or not as well.
First off I am more of a pencil person than ink. I tend to both enjoy other people's work and get caught up in comparing their work to my own. I had thought and posted I would tackle it in a style I am trying out, and then I felt it was becoming heavy and overwhelming to come up with ideas for each day even ahead of time. Then I thought choosing 1 word per week to do a little more story for each. I liked that but I like all the words I was going to miss. lols So I am going back and forth, but still I need to simplify and try a small story in my current try style and do each day.

I want to look at others work as inspiring, as seeing how other people solved and told their story.

I hope you find some way to be happy with Inktober and to have fun -fun that's what I forget sometimes.

ps. Last year I did work in ink but it was more important to start a habit, this year it's habit and storytelling and fun and just trying again and again. So don't give in and or give up -with me.

MOO

@Kristin-Wauson I think you should do whatever you want with Inktober. Use pencils if you want. At least you'll be drawing everyday and getting some new ideas. And if you can't keep up because of other things, it's not a sin. Have fun with it! We'll love you no matter what Also, you ARE one of the cool kids!

Kristin Wauson

@Marsha-Kay-Ottum-Owen thanks Marsha ️ ... so are you!

Kristin Wauson

@Heather-Boyd thanks so much for sharing! Ill do something. I just am not quite sure yet what it will be. I look forward to seeing how you decide to approach it. I think using it to experiment and have fun is good advice.

Kristin Wauson

@Susan-Marks Jake has mentioned before that you can modify the posting schedule to you own needs and mentioned the “half marathon approach” where you are posting less often. He always emphasizes that the important thing is being consistent so if that means you can only do it once or twice a week you should decide ahead of time what days you will post and try to stick to that schedule to keep the consistency.

Kristin Wauson

@Coreyartus you hit the nail right on the head. Thanks for weighing in and for cheering everyone on!