This year, finally, a friend’s encouragement led me to this challenge. As I look back....
TIGHT SPOT
As a girl who loves to draw and doodle, I feel so glad to live in a world where there are Inktobers. Online art community gets active during the month of October for the Inktober Challenge that requires art enthusiasts and professional artists to use ink and draw something regularly based on the official Inktober prompts. I really wanted to do this challenge, but the kind of professional drawings people would post for Inktober kept me away from picking up the pen.
This year, finally, a friend’s encouragement led me to this challenge. As I look back, I can say Inktober was fun, but I am quite upset about a couple of things I didn’t do right. Here are my confessions ...
What’s ink?
I am embarrassed to share this that I thought we actually needed an ink pen or fountain pen to do this challenge. The same fountain pen I hated using in school and college. Then when I realized my sister is already using fountain pens in school, I was left with no excuses and I began drawing.
After three drawings, fountain pen began to annoy me with all its screeching and smudging. While reflecting on why I can’t work with fountain pens, I realized markers, pointers, ball points are all pens that use ink to function! Ah, I could have used anything to get started and joined in a bit earlier.
A little editing never harmed anyone
I am guilty of spending a ridiculous amount of time editing photos of my drawings. I can say that I took 10 minutes to draw something and ended up spending 20 minutes to edit its photograph. I would increase the exposure, sharpen the outline of my drawing, try out multiple vintage filters and do all kinds of editing procedures to make my photos look Instagram-worthy. But now when I look at my feed and all the inktober drawings, I wish I had spent more time on perfecting my drawing skills instead of my photography skills. After all, inktober isn’t a photography challenge!
Prompt list was a problem
I hated the official prompt list for Inktober 2019. Prompts like, “injured”, “overgrown”, “ancient” got me stuck. And, I just couldn’t come up with any idea to begin with. I think prompts were a bit too general and random; but apparently, the online art community enjoyed the prompt list and came up with some terrific art, so I guess it’s not even a problem.
Getting an Instagram life
Of course, I took this challenge because I am passionate about drawing, but I was also greedy for some “likes”. I thought since Inktober hashtags would be trending so I might get some attention. Sadly, the highest number of likes I got on my post was 13! Even some of my friends didn’t show some love.
Drawing in bulk
The most important rule for Inktober Challenge is to draw regularly and consistently and I literally violated it several times. At a point during the challenge when Inktober felt like a lot of work, I drew five drawings together in one go and posted them on separate days. I know it kills the purpose of the challenge and it’s cheating, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
