Conflicted over Inktober

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