What a ride this experience was! Inktober is something I’ve seen others do in the past but never joined due to either being too busy or just late to start. For the uninitiated, Inktober is a drawing challenge where every participant gets a prompt for that day and their job is to draw whatever that prompt is; then they need to repeat this every day for the month of October. The point of the challenge is to help you improve your drawing skills as sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation to practice drawing when you don’t know what to draw. With the challenge now done, I feel both relieved that I’m free to do whatever I want and upset with stopping when I was just on a roll with my improvements. Guess I will have to draw something again soon to satisfy my cravings. In any case, here are a couple of ways I managed to get into the habit of drawing everyday for Inktober.

Drawing Habits

What Is The Objective

Before starting Inktober I wrote down a few objectives I want to accomplish by the end of the challenge. This helped drive my motivation as these became my focus. As I mentioned in my New Years Resolution post. It’s not enough just to create the objective, I needed to define my “key results” that would lead me to achieving it. As an example, these were my OKRs.

Objective: Don’t miss a single day.

 Key Result 1:  Sketch/Plan my drawings in advance.

 Key Result 2:  Draw early in the day.

 Key Result 3:  Post what I have, even if it’s incomplete.

Objective Practice different art styles

 Key Result 1:  Gather references

 Key Result 2:  Look up tutorials

 Key Result 3:  Try different brushes and blending modes

Sketch Early

Before joining Inktober I thought one of the rules was that you had to draw everything the exact day when the prompt is. This however is not the case and should not be the case. Many people like me aren’t so quick when drawing art from scratch, it takes time for us to plan and visualize what we want to draw. This is why sketching my drawings a day or a week before the due date is very helpful.

I drew the left a couple days prior to actually drawing the image on the right.

Have A Trigger

In order to create the habit of drawing everyday, we need a trigger to tell us when to start drawing. For most people, its usually a certain time of day. I drew right after eating my breakfast though I assume most people would draw later into the evening. The benefit of being an early bird is that it becomes less stressful as the deadlines creeps in and we have more time to polish if we want. I made sure to keep consistent with my schedule as any delays could make it so my artwork does not become complete on time.

Have Accountability Partners

Whether this be through friends or others participating in Inktober, it’s rewarding to see others drawing with me. Not only that, but it helps me explore different techniques and styles I would have never thought of. As an example, in my Day 8 image below that I tried a hatching shading style that my friend was doing and tried a variation on it on Day 11. I never would have thought to do an animation either like for Day 20, but I was inspired when I saw my friend do one. Whether it’s being on a team or competing with one another, it’s important to have others around us.

The Final Results

Day 1: Crystal	Day 2: Suit	Day 3: Vessel	Day 4: Knot	Day 5: Raven	Day 6: Spirit	Day 7: Fan
Day 8: Watch	Day 9: Pressure	Day 10: Pick	Day 11: Sour	Day 12: Stuck	Day 13: Roof	Day 14: Tick
Day 15: Helmet	Day 16: Compass	Day 17: Collide	Day 18: Moon	Day 19: Loop	Day 20: Sprout	Day 21: Fuzzy
Day 22: Open	Day 23: Leak	Day 24: Extinct	Day 25: Splat	Day 26: Connect	Day 27: Spark	Day 28: Crispy
Day 29: Patch	Day 30: Slither	Day 31: Risk

It was a pleasure doing Inktober and I hope to do this again for another year.