I remember back when my sister first told me about Inktober. She said ‘Yeah, you do a drawing.’ And I was like ‘Oh, one for the month?’ Of course she laughed and then told me it was a daily thing. It was incomprehensible to me. That’s how slow I used to be at art.

That was many years ago. Now I’ve done Inktober for a few years. I’m not saying I’m any good, but damn it – I’ve done it. That’s my first tip – don’t take it too seriously. It’s enough to do it. You art may be terrible, awful, but it’s all part of the growing process. If you want to improve at anything, you need to fail often. In this case, the ‘failing’ is creating bad work.

And you don’t have to do it every day. You can do all 31 drawing / paintings in one day (the kamikaze version) or fit the 31 drawings in on the weekends. Or you can commit to just every other day, just the weekends for with 8 drawings for the month, hell even once a week. You can make it your own. That’s how you start. Then you can do another month later on and make it more strenuous.

The best tip I have is to plan ahead. And it’s not cheating. It’s just necessary. But I am a super planner, it’s part of my personality. I love to plan. I wish I knew the day I would die ahead of time so I could plan around that! You can come up with a theme. Or choose a favorite subject. Examples are: dancers, mermaids, angels, mountains, types of trees or flowers, beachscapes, birds, cats, dogs, lions, tigers, bears 🙂 Follow the prompts or create your own. The possibilities are endless, which is why I recommend planning. If you don’t have a plan, it will take more time each day and you may be stressed out or even worse, de-motivated. But if you’re ok with working spontaneously, then of course you can do that. That could be interesting as well, especially if you want to do abstract or minimalist pieces.

Do thumbnail sketches, create references in a photo editing program to plan / check the compositions. Play around with color palettes or commit to a limited palette or just black and white. The first few times I participated in Inktober, I just did pen drawings and it was great practice. And I didn’t share what I created the first few times online at all. It takes off a lot of the pressure and you can really, truly experiment if you know no one else will see it.

Ideally, you would create 10 – 15 sketches the previous month.  That’s what I do.  I think the hardest part is creating the foundation.  Then you at least have a starting point and you’re already ahead of the game. You could even finish a few early so you can skip days during the month of the challenge if you’re busy or if something comes up. I aim to commit a set amount of time each day, like an hour or so, at a minimum.

It’s not really about obsessively finishing the challenge within the time frame, though that is a great goal to strive for. It’s that you finish 31 pieces. If it takes a bit longer, it’s fine. The start to finish practice is the point!