Hannah Cline

Inktober 2019 - A much-needed challenge. 

This was my first year participating in the art challenge 'Inktober' and I wanted to share my thoughts about it while it is still rather fresh in my mind. For anybody who doesn't know, Inktober is an annual art challenge, originated by an artist called Jake Parker to test his own limits. Basically, the challenge is for every day of October, to create an ink drawing and post it on social media with the hashtags #inktober and #inktober[year]. An official prompt list is posted on the official Inktober website . 

I decided to participate in this year's challenge for several reasons. For a number of years, I felt like I had lost the creativity I used to have as a teenager, and that always frightened me. I felt like I had no ideas, and even when I did, I had no confidence in my ability to create something close to what I imagined. When I decided to pursue a career in Visual Effects (VFX), I hoped to regain and cultivate that creative spark. I was fortunate enough to find a job in a studio despite having no VFX background. Since then, I have realised that one of the most important things I can do, both for my career and personal creative fulfilment, would be to go back and try to learn the fundamentals of art - colour, light, composition - that I never really bothered with when I used to draw as a teenager. Over the past months, I have worked, studying from art books, sketching from life, following tutorials, et cetera, but I have often found myself lacking two things as I strove to improve: focus, and discipline.

Inktober was the perfect opportunity to work on all of these things. 

It really was a challenge. It tested me in so many ways, stretching my imagination, my artistic capabilities, my physical endurance and my mental discipline, but I am so happy with the results.

It was difficult making enough time each day to get out something I felt could be called a finished piece, but by the time I finally got to bed each night, I fell asleep with the satisfaction of accomplishment.

I didn't always like the prompts,  but sticking to them forced me to think in some creative ways - sometimes an idea just came to me, while other times, I had to mine it from the depths.

Being confined to ink drawings (though I may have cheated on a couple of occasions with watercolours and pastels over ink!) encouraged me to try out things I might not have done otherwise, such as dip pens and drawing ink, which for the record, it turns out I absolutely love!

Using ink as my primary drawing tool forced me to deal with mistakes rather than concealing them. Squiggly lines could not be smudged into place, and scarily prominent ink smudges had to be worked into the finished piece if I wanted to get it out on time. I've always been a perfectionist when it came to drawing, erasing over and over until it was 'just right', so this was an incredibly powerful lesson for me to learn. 

Similarly, because the goal was to upload a piece of art every single day on social media, if I decided partway through that I didn't like a piece very much, it didn't really matter. There wasn't time to go back and start over - so I made it as good as possible and released it anyway. Besides, even if I don't like a piece, who is to say that someone else won't? Art is subjective. 

Completing Inktober - making 31 pieces of art in 31 (okay, maybe 32) days - has been a very powerful thing for me. It has taught me some valuable lessons, and for the first time ever, I feel confident enough to say that I am an artist. I know I've still got a lot to learn, don't get me wrong, but I know that I can produce, on demand, something straight from the heart that both I and other people can enjoy. And that makes me really happy.

So, finally, where does this leave me? Well, I plan to carry the momentum forward. I'm not going to stop producing art just because October is over, and I want to continue the discipline I've built over the last month, as well as develop my skills further. I will aim to continue creating and learning at least five days per week, experimenting in new styles and mediums and growing my abilities. Having managed seven days a week during Inktober, I am confident that this is something I can manage - whilst also allowing myself the occasional full night of sleep! I also want to take some of the pieces I have created during Inktober, and develop them into full-on paintings, both digital and traditional. So... watch this space. There's definitely more to come!

P.S. If you're interested in what the prompt was for each day, check the text beneath each picture!