Inktober Withdrawal - Looking for other creative prompts.

[Charlie Eve Ryan]

SVS is hosting SLOWVEMBER. https://www.svslearn.com/news/2017/10/24/slowvember-

[Jon Anderson]

One thought I've considered is to recycle the prompts or combine them in different ways without the requirement of finishing it on a daily basis.

[Eli]

I hear you, @Laurel-Aylesworth ! I like the hangover analogy. I feel like "what just happened!?" Ha! It was my first Inktober, and it was hard, but really amazing. I was surprised at how much I learned and improved. (My contest submission ended up being a sort of love letter to Inktober). I know that I got serious withdrawal for other mediums during the month and kept having to stop myself from picking up paints, colored pencils, etc. Were there any pieces you ended up wanting to explore in a different medium? Also, there are sites that generates prompts for artists--here are a couple of links:
http://artprompts.org/
www.magatsu.net/art/

[Andyg]

I’ve had a lot of attention from people who are on my Facebook friends list, so now see the value in everyday posting. At the same time one of my biggest interests is in men’s mental health....and I failed a bit on my inktober because I aimed too big on a couple of pieces . So, pulling all this together I’m using November and tying it to movember. I can’t grow much facial fur for many reasons, so instead I’m going to be drawing a nano picture each day (nanovember) and highlighting a men’s health issue each day along with the pic. So I made myself a pic, and kudos to Jake, naturally.

The idea is that people were already liking and sharing my inktober pics, so hopefully this will highlight men’s health issues. Giving back a bit I guess.

Drawing small ain’t easy, and requires a bit of planning, then actually drawing that planning smaller, choosing what to leave out.

[Jason Kilthau]

there is a fun little app from Jazza (Draw with Jazza) called Arty Games. I think it's like 4$ but it does amazing for randomizing ideas for characters to environments, giving you prompts to draw. It comes as like a party game with a timer and all but you can just set the timer to indefinite. Or do what I have done and use it for the ideas and keep randomizing until you get ones you like!

[albertognolo]

@laurel-aylesworth Hi Laurel, this was my first complete Inktober. And at the end I had your same feelings!

One creative prompt could be to find a buddy, set a common theme and then every week (or two weeks, or every month) decide a prompt and then work together on the same drawing, for example you draw one character and your buddy draw another one to put together, and then show up your work. As an example to be more clear, I've just started doing this with a friend, I used to draw robots and he used to draw monsters, so the common theme is Monsters VS Robots then every week we thing about a topic/prompt, like 'fight' and then he will draw the monster and I will draw the robot and we'll put them together in a single composition. Here you can spice up the things like let each one decide for the other one the pose of the character and similar.

Another way could be to take a set of characters you like, for example from your favorite childhood TV series or cartoon, or the Greek gods, and redraw them one by one, day by day, with your style or in a different context or with different age (for example the characters where kids, you can draw them as adults...).

[MountainBeehive]

There's a fun challenge by Fran Menses (frannerd), as seen in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CymuyLlA5X0 (prompts are listed in the video's info box). It doesn't really have specific time restrictions, and lots of people are doing it too (hashtags on instagram #frannerdchallenge #30thingstodraw).

In my case inktober made the inner critic even worse it seems >.>

[Kat]

@albertognolo that sounds like fun! Sort of like a comic jam I did once, where we were given a story line (sort of vague on purpose) and everybody took turns contributing 1-3 panels of the comic. It was really fun to see how different people moved the story along in their own style.

[aska]

@jason-kilthau Jazza got me into drawing! He is so cool:)

[MOO]

@charlie-eve-ryan I like the slowvwmber idea because it forces me to take more tim eand do a good job I wonder fi I could use my current watercolor project-even though I started it in October......it's been quite tiem consuming

[Wendy Plybon]

This is a list of 365 prompts, one for every day of the year:
https://monalisaliveshere.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/365-days-of-every-day-drawing-challenge-prompts.pdf

[albertognolo]

@kat Yeah that is fun, mainly if you put some more constraints on it, like let each other define the pose of the character for the other one, or making the general composition like a movie poster. But the comic jam you mention looks really fun!

[Kat]

@albertognolo, it was. Constraints were that the person who started it wrote out a rough storyline that we all had to follow and develop, and once someone designed a character, we all stuck to that design. For example, the king was a rabbit, and the hero was a penguin (I think - it was a few years ago). Super fun to see how different people drew the same character in their own style.

[Pam Boutilier]

@andyg Kind of related to what Andy said - last year I did a sort of take on Movember and drew all characters and creatures with moustaches (like this armadillo). I think I'll do some more this year and I'll use your hashtag Andy!

[moldrewes]

@jason-kilthau Thanks!!! I had been looking for a prompt generator.

[Andyg]

@pam-boutilier cool!

[Lee White]

I'd invite any and all to participate in Slowvember (www.slowvember.com). It's the oppostite of inktober in that you pick one thing you really want to work on, then slow down and make it as good as you can.

The great part about inktober is it gets the pen moving. Awesome! BUT, there is a downside too. When finished with Inktober, most people end up with 31 pretty bad drawings. Or maybe some nice starts, etc. Regardless, don't confuse making lots of images with making good images.

Being busy is different than actually being productive. Its way too easy to settle on a daily prompt which you may or may not do very well at. At the end you don't have something that really moved you forward in a meaningful way. Which is why I started Slowvember. The goal is to really focus effort on something. Have you ever done a painting that took a month? If you haven't, then you are missing out. This work is hard and you have to confront your limits. When you are doing quick sketches, you never bump up against the edge of your ability. But with this, you will hit it quick.

Have you ever done a painting where you can say "This is as good as I can possibly do right now". It's tough and requires patience, and focus, and even simple things like understanding what kind of work you want to make.

So I recommend bailing on the daily prompts, slowing down, and making something good.