Conflicted over Inktober

Heather Boyd

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!

Kristin Wauson

@Phil-Cullen good advice! Its so easy to get wrapped up in something because everyone is doing it and then you forget to evaluate if it is actually moving you forward. I had the same experience with the 100 day project only I didn't make it nearly as far as you. One of my good illustrator friends did an amazing 100 day project a few years ago that i have always been so enamored with. She recommended doing one, but emphasized that she does NOT think you need to go all the way to 100, or post every day and she said she tried to repeat it and didn’t even make it to 10. I had no idea she had started one and quit. I think we are much less aware of other peoples failures than we are of our own. To me, she just seemed better than me. Like she had some magic inside of her that made her more capable of finishing a project like that. But everyone fails at stuff. Try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, try, succeed, try, fail.

MOO

@Kristin-Wauson It's called failing forward. I heard it in one of the podcasts @Will-Terry did with his friend, Tyrus (?). I can never remember his name but he sure gave a lot of good advice!

JerrySketchyArt

@Susan-Marks I'm pretty sure that came from Jake. He mentioned doing it as a half-marathon (every other day), 10k (every 3rd day IIRC), or 5k (one per week) if those work better for you.

Do what works for you, and have fun with it!

Kat

I decided against doing it, although the urge to join the crowd is still there. But it just isn’t what I need to focus on right now, so it wouldn’t be helpful to me. Gotta be practical even if it’s not fun.

smceccarelli

Hallo Kristin!
Like you, I don‘t work in ink, so Inktober - as awesome as it is - has never had much appeal for me. I did it once a couple of years ago and used it to work on a project - a short graphic story I wanted to see in the world. I‘m happy I did it and it thought me a few things. For social media, I‘ve been creating my own challenges or joining others that are more aligned with the type of work I do. Here are two to check out: Colour Collective (spelled the British way) is taking place every Friday (submission at 7:30 GMT @clr_collective #colour_collective). It‘s a challenge based on a color, given out every week on Twitter. It‘s very active on Twitter, but you can use the handle on other channels too. Another one that I‘ve been thinking of doing now and then is Animal Alphabets (@animalalphabets), also on Twitter.
Both run continually, so it‘s a good „filler“ that whips up some social media interest without being a month-long committment.
But then, you can create your own challenge, as big or as small as it suits you! Doing 3 portfolio-level illustrations and documenting your process may be more useful for you and still give you some new followers!

Nyrryl Cadiz

@smceccarelli hi, Simona! It’s good to have you back in the forums. Will you be doing Inktober next month?

smceccarelli

@Nyrryl-Cadiz Hi! Yes, I haven't been around in a while! No, it's been a while since I've done any social media challenge. I have too much work going on (a good place to be!). But I do need to find time to work on some personal pieces and new promos... maybe next year.

Heather Boyd

@smceccarelli

Thank you for sharing these others, now that I recently joined Twitter I might be inclined to do some challenges there. I just like the words for Inktober but I don’t mind necessarily not doing the ink way. Lols

Nyrryl Cadiz

@smceccarelli That’s definitely a great problem to have. Lol i’ll stay tuned for your work next year.

Heather Boyd

@Nyrryl-Cadiz

But I have sketched out ring in my head lols

Annemieke

@smceccarelli I haven't been on twitter for ages. Mostly because I lost interest in the amount of garbage that gets posted. I had no idea that there are actually interesting illustration conversations going on there. How can I find these? Is there a special promt to follow (other than the two specific ones you mention...)?

smceccarelli

@Annemieke Twitter can be very confusing. I highly recommend a free Twitter dashboard called TweeDeck - it really helps make sense of the conversations going on. I cannot say I‘m very active on Twitter (it‘s always in my bucket list), but it‘s where most of the publishing world lives, so I‘m always aspiring at making sense of it (though nowadays maybe LinkedIn is taking on a more prominent role than it used to have). Anyhow, I follow #PBChat, #picturebookportfolio, #kidlitart and a few others. On TweetDeck, you can set up any stream and take a look at it. If you like what you see, you keep it, interact or post. If not, you delete it and move on. I cannot make any sense of the standard feed and I never look at it. I only look through the TweetDeck dashboard.

Jonas Zavacky

Hi @Kristin-Wauson ! Well, Inktober started as a challenge to get better with ink by a person who wants to get better in ink and can see himself doing professional work in ink.

The pressure is real because it became so big and everybody is doing it. But there is no "you should do it".. Everybody has its own priorities. So you don't have to do it. For me, I always work and try to get better in ink so I don't really see it as a challenge (the inking part - haha I am funny ink is always a challenge ) and I don't do inktober for that very reason.

But.. there is the other side of the challange which is - drawing every day and pushing yourself creatively - to come up with good ideas every day which you are proud of. Which for me is far more harder than drawing in ink. So If I am going to do inktober it is because of that reason.

So if you want to do the challange...you can try it for that reason too... You can do the challenge in pencil the ink is just a hard medium that won't forgive you mistakes - and that will push you as an artist.

So those are my thoughts on this topic