I started Inktober strong, completing a few sketches in advance and scribbling on napkins at work when an idea came to me. By day 13 I got tired. I'm not going to say that I expected to follow through with the whole month (0/10 attempt at self support), it felt like a long shot. But I did learn a few things...
Trying to draw something everyday is hard.
This is something I read about Inktober over and over again, yet I still attempted to drill myself at sticking to my allotted prompt day after day. You have no idea how often I found myself thinking of other ideas!
For some reason, forcing myself to stick to a prompt caused my mind to wander to other ideas I could look forward to pursuing later and through this I felt like the beauty of consistency reaps an abundance of ideas.
The challenge to illustrate an idea in a quicker time frame was good for me.
Too often I focus on small details that I end up scrapping later on, keeping a 30 min-1 hour time frame on my Inktober drawings helped me learn how to spit out my ideas at a faster rate.
Color choice is always one of the harder decisions for me and sticking to my Arteza watercolor brush pens I thought this was easier, I was totally wrong!
Despite this, forcing myself to make a decision faster resulted in less overthinking, this is something I want to try to keep in my practice. More spitting out, more iterations, less thinking before spitting... I'm sure you get what I'm saying.
I do wish that I was consistent enough to follow through with the whole month.
What I was looking forward to was seeing progression throughout the pieces, maybe a shift in my process or a lightbulb moment when I finally found a consistency in the style of the pieces. Who's to know that if I continued I may have learned and gained more from a month's worth of drawings.
I believe that now (3 days into November) writing this post I have come to peace with not finishing, filled with hope to start projects (and hopefully finish) outside of spooky little ghosts
but it was definitely fun while it lasted, and what felt nice was when I was reminded that nothing's lost from getting a little more practice in than usual.
As a side note, I've been working on a lot of crochet things and am hoping to release some things on Depop or possibly post them on Etsy. Keep an eye out!
Keep on truckin,
- Tracie
