Inktober 2020 - Esther

Every year since 2009 there has been Inktober. 

Inktober is an online ink drawing challenge for the month of October developed by Jake Parker. Each year, a list of thirty-one daily prompts appears (under the “inktober” hashtag) for drawing. There are few rules except that you use ink, you share your work with someone & you do a drawing every day (or every other day or once a week). There’s even an Inktober website & accompanying merchandise. In spite of the fact that on paper (no pun intended) Inktober looks to be right up my street, I’ve never tried it till now. If you’re not going to do something new in 2020, when it has occurred to you to do it, let’s face it - it really will have been a waste of a year.

It’s ridiculous actually. Despite always having two weeks of holidays every October & despite always working in ink, I have never even thought of Inktober as something I could possibly get done. I’ve always managed to make some excuse; I’ve always managed to never make the time for it. As with most things that we talk ourselves out of doing in life, it was based on a mild fear. 

You could convince yourself you’d never be able to complete it. You could worry about perhaps being ill at some point. There are a lot of bugs going about in any given October. Embarking on it requires a decision & a commitment. You are giving yourself unnecessary work & doing so in your free time. You know what you’re like – although you don’t believe in “not having the time” because it’s always a question of making or finding the time, you do worry about having the headspace should the month turn out to be particularly difficult or busy. Or depressing. Your hand could get sawn off in a factory accident & you hate to leave a job unfinished…

There is also the more likely possibility that you run out of ideas halfway through. 

The good thing about Inktober however is that list of daily prompts released before you begin, so that even if you can’t get ahead of the actual drawing (for which there are no rules except the ones you apply yourself), you can have the words tumbling around in your mind ready for action. Therefore the lack of ideas is merely another obstacle you’re placing in front of yourself.

At some point I decided I’d just try it, realising that once I had started, I’d probably just carry on, it having become part of my day. Sure enough, I was ill for a few days, yet I still managed it. & as I am inclined to do, I did indeed start applying rules for myself in order to give it structure. I’m happier with a structure, a rough plan. I like to get ahead. Of course “getting ahead” means not really developing the positive habits Inktober hopes to promote & now that October is done, I won’t be doing so much frequent drawing…

Here are the rules I gave myself. They might seem very straightforward, but once I had them, everything was much easier: 

• The image will be drawn in a circle of the same size every day

• The prompt word will be written at the top in a doubled-up version of my own handwriting

• I will always sign it

• I will use the same five pens & no others (Muji & Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens)

• I will do them all in a notebook (bought from the RSC shop last year with words invented by Shakespeare on the front)

• They will all be in black & white

• I will post them on all my social media platforms, using the hashtags

• Don’t rush them but don’t do something that’s going to take forever…

Another rule I usually apply to any artwork I’m doing (other than commissions) is to subvert the theme in some way. In other words, although these word prompts exist, how can I employ another or an unexpected meaning to them in visual form? 

Sometimes there seemed like no room for subversion, for instance “Dune” or “Rocket” (I was damned if salad was getting into my drawings…) As usual I looked for opportunities to make them more sinister or creepy wherever I could. If I couldn’t make them unsettling, I’d turn to the natural world. Even that wasn’t fool proof. It seemed like a fairly unimaginative & certainly uninspiring list in places & some of the words annoyed me, but after over a decade of producing them, the guy must be plumbing the depths. In any case, you shouldn’t complain too much – you end up with thirty-one drawings that didn’t exist before that you would never have produced without the prompt.

I’ve felt much more satisfied with some rather than others, but that’s to be expected. The spiral-bound notebook was a good mental safety net – that if the drawing went badly, I could tear it out & start again. That only happened once when I sneezed & the ink line went right across the page. Luckily I hadn’t got too far into the image… My favourites (apart from "Crawl") are probably the skeleton ones but I do love to draw bones. (Irritatingly, I’ve since thought of a creepy idea for “Rocket” too…)

At the end of something I regard as an experiment, I’d hope to have learned something. So what have I learned from participating in Inktober 2020? 

Well, that it’s surprising what you can come up with when you put your mind to it, even if you feel uninspired initially. That you can do something unexpectedly easily when you’ve pressured yourself into it. That you may well thrive on rules, especially if you’ve imposed them.

That creativity for creativity’s sake is a good thing, an enriching thing, regardless of whether you’re happy with the results. That the discipline is good for you. That sometimes the quantity provides a sort of quality, even if it’s not very high.

So if you have the inclination & the pen, I’d recommend Inktober 2021. I think I’ll give it a go. I just hope the prompts are decent.