Inktober didn't go as planned... and that's okay!

Oh, Inktober...

I had such grand plans for Inktober this year that I thought I would be fine chugging along through them, but apparently not. For the past two years, I have done the full 31 days which knowing I would not be able to do the full 31 days this year I decided to do every second day which included 16 prompts.

I decided to choose prompts from three different challenges to keep things interesting, so I did #Drawtober hosted by MissFrem, #InkAutumn2020 hosted by Stacey McEvoy-Caunt, and #Peptober hosted by Pepper Raccoon.

I ended up doing 10 of the 16, and you know what? That's okay!

I’ve recently moved an hour out of the city and I knew doing Inktober while beginning this new commute which adds like 2 hours to my workday was never going to work out. However, the art I did end up making during October was work I really enjoyed and really want to do more of.

The plan

Instead of my usual plan of drawing whatever I wanted that suits the prompts in whatever colours and styles I felt like, I made myself a bit restricted this year. I planned out a few guidelines to follow so that my Inktober series was a bit more cohesive and actually looked like part of a series.

I gave myself a limited colour palette, with colours I wouldn't usually use but would fit a sort of halloween-y/witchy type vibe. Then I chose two styles that I could pick between, one that included one main illustration in a shape and another that included a mixture of smaller illustrations that made up a larger illustration.

These limitations actually made the challenge just that little bit easier. I didn’t have to choose colours from any colour under the rainbow, I didn’t need to look for inspiration for styles or designs that I wanted to try out. I had my ‘brief sheet’ with the colour palette and a few example images showing the kind of style I wanted to go for and that was that.

How’d it go, really…

Apart from the fact I missed out five illustrations I really liked how the series turned out. I loved the spellbook illustration so much I even made it into a print and took it along to my market stall at Wellington Zinefest and it was one of my best sellers! It's now live in the shop if you want to get your hands on one.

So while it didn't go to plan I really enjoyed what I made and I'm going to keep exploring limited palettes and these new styles. In between doing more watercolour painting because honestly a few times I could've finished an Inktober piece but I was more excited about finishing a watercolour piece and that's cool too.

If you want to see more of my Inktober pieces head on over to my instagram, they're all on there! All ten of them… 🙈

- Sophie

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