Or at least I hope it will!
It's October, and if you're an art enthusiast, you know INKtober is all the rage right now. If you don't, let me loop you in... INKtober is a drawing challenge that pushes artists all over the world to do one ink drawing every single day of October. It's supposed to encourage artists to consistently create and improve their inking skills.
This challenge was actually started by Illustrator, Jake Parker. You can learn more about that here.
Anyway, as with anything that is not a habit, doing something consistently for 30+ days is no joke! Last year I barely made it through the challenge. This year though, I am determined to see things through.
How?
Well it pretty straight forward and obvious... PLANNING!
Last year, I noticed my biggest struggle was thinking about what to draw. The anxiety/fear of the blank page is real my peoples! I would open up my sketch book, look at the prompt of the day and then spend forever figuring out what to draw. This can be stressful and it amplifies a crippling feeling of self-doubt.
1. Choose a general Theme
There already exists a prompts list to help give ideas for the whole month. While it's exciting to challenge yourself to create something off of one word, the options can still feel so vast. You can choose a theme, for example, "women in everyday life" to further guide your creative process.
For me, I decided to work without the prompts list, which is an actual option for INKtober. Remember the list exists to help guide you, but you don't have to follow it. What matters is that you do draw.
I'm doing characters from cartoon network, because I wanted something that was fun and easy to commit to on super busy days.
2. Write down a list for everyday of the week
So this year, I made sure I thought of my drawings in the last week of September. I then wrote down a list of ideas for the next week. So I'm pretty much covered until Sunday! On Saturday and Sunday, I will continue to plan for week 2. At that rate, what is 4 weeks and 4 days?