Inktober 2017

written on Thursday, November 2, 2017

Last month I participated to Inktober.

In case you don't know what it is, Inktober is a yearly challenge where you have to create an ink drawing every day of the October month and post it online. To help you find inspiration, the Inktober web site provides a word list: one word for each day.

Since I am about to release a new version of Tiny Wheels, I decided that in addition to the Inktober word list, all my drawings would feature vehicles. Some days were more difficult than others but I ended up with some interesting combinations, and some drawings relate to each others, for example 1 (Swift), 28 (Fall), 4 (Underwater) and 30 (Found) form a mini story. 2 (Divided) and 29 (United) are related as well.

Here are all the drawings I did:

I tried to do Inktober in 2014, but did not make it past a few drawings. I am happy I made it through the entire month this time. It may not look like it, but it's quite tiring, I felt both happy and relieved when we reached the end of the month, a bit like how it felt to reach the end of a school year.

There is a strong sense of community which emerges from drawing with others on the same theme for a month. You start to follow other participants, and wonder how they are going to interpret the next word. I was a bit skeptical about the word list in the beginning, but it turns out to be a great way to find inspiration and to share something with others.

I had to dug some old pens from my drawers (including a 23 year old grey one, which quickly passed out...) and bought a few new ones. I especially enjoy my large brush-like black pen, I love the feeling of inking with it.

I am not satisfied with all of my drawings, real-life inking is quite unforgiving. There was often a moment when I was like "Oh no... Why did I drew this line?!?" but that's how one learns. I like to think my inking skills improved during this month.

I hope I can do it again next year, but this time I'll get a grey pen for shading, I made way too many hatchings during this month! I also drew too many wheels :)