#Inktober progress part 1

I would love to be the type of person that can update my Inktober posts daily on this blog, but I will settle for twice this month. For those that want to see the daily updates, you can view my Instagram. I’ve been making pretty great progress as far as following the prompts and updating regularly. That might be a different story for the second half of the month (haha…cry).

Reasons I love Inktober:

Gets me out of my comfort zone: the prompts force me to draw subjects I would not consider, can we say cockatrice?
Puts me back into the sketch habit: I get terribly lazy about my sketchbook and this kickstarts my studio practice
Reminds me that a little progress each day is enough: I get bummed out from time to time that I don’t have ample hours of the day devoted to drawing and painting. Inktober reminds me that I can still get lots done in a small, focused amount of time.
Inktober community: I love finding new artists!

Reasons I (sometimes) hate Inktober:

The ever-crushing disappointment when you don’t follow through: past years, I would set my expectations too high and outpace myself within the first week. I’ve learned to keep it simple last year and it prevented this mode full stop.
I suck at ink: every year I think I am going to miraculously become professional at inking and then I set off to prove that I am a fool. Doesn’t seem to matter what tools I try, they all have issues. I *DO* think that I have improved in the last few years, but that is only due to the face that I’ve been using ink on other practices.
Infighting: Oh lord, don’t join Inktober Facebook groups if you can help it. I used to think that Inktober has to be all about the ink, but I’ve thankfully opened up more about those views. It’s sad to see others have not.

Because I don’t want to be redundant and repost everything from Instagram, I made a video (I’m addicted!) of different time lapses and the finished photos, exclusive for this page. I’ll be sure to do the same thing for the end of the month. Sadly, I don’t think I will have inktober related originals to sell. If I have to be honest with myself, ink is much more appropriated a sketch medium for me and not something that I pass off as finished and refined. I will work on several for Society6 Art/products and paint some other sketches when I have time.