A finished drawing can take me hours, usually days, (sometimes weeks or months, if I’m being truly honest).
So along came Inktober 2018! I had always wanted to try it, and in 2018 I finally had no excuses (quitting your day job really frees up a chunk of time)—but was I really going to whip up a one-off drawing every day?
My inner thoughts on day one:
BMAN’s Lizard Brain: “Do something good! Don’t mess it up! And finish it quick so you can still work on projects you already have going, like your novel, that new comic, those commissions that actually pay the bills!”
BMAN’s Wizard Brain: “Leave me alone, villain! I don’t need that kind of pressure!”
BMAN’s Lizard Brain: “You’ve already wasted 15 minutes arguing with me! Go! Go! Go!”
BMAN’s Wizard Brain: “Ahhh! I hate you!”
Climbing the Mountain that is Inktober
But I committed to it— I made a plan to tackle that mountain!
First, I set aside a block of time each day. Second, I didn’t look ahead at the list of prompts, only checking to see what the next day’s keyword was before hitting the hay.
By day 3 or 4, my nervousness started to calm down, and I actually got into a flow.
And Inktober bred creativity. The first few days I stuck to the familiar, but soon started taking cracks at new subjects—plus, coming up with something unique based on the day’s keyword was fun.
Besides, trying new things led to trying new techniques. I wasn’t too far into the month when I thought to myself, “Self, you could do the same inking style every day, but that’s boring, yo. Why don’t you try switching it up, brah?” To which I replied, “Who are you? I don’t sound anything like that.”
Switch it Up, Brah
So I put some music on to drown out the voices in my head, and started experimenting. I figured I should be getting something out of the process. If not, what was I doing it for? The likes and lols on Facebook?
As artists, we tend to get comfortable in our artistic grooves. Change is hard, but it also expands our tool box. I started doing tight inks, rough inks, playing with positive and negative space, sketching with ink, you name it.
I quickly learned to stop worrying about the details and instead concentrate on the impact of the overall image.
It also helped me re-prioritize composition. I’m very susceptible to the rabbit hole of detail, especially working digitally— when you can zoom in and obsess over minutiae or hit undo 1000 times before committing, it becomes very easy to lose the forest for the trees. But there’s just no time for that when there’s only a few hours for each piece—I quickly learned to stop worrying about the details and instead concentrate on the impact of the overall image.
That experimentation means my 2018 Inktober output is kind of all over the place, but that’s kinda cool. There’s also some rare fan art in there—I don’t do a lot of fan art, but when you need something done in a few hours, you don’t always have time to design an original character.
Plus, it’s always fun to match the keyword to a property you love. I mean, when the keyword of the day is “Precious” you have to do something Tolkien related, amiright?
So head over and check out the gallery of all 31 Inktober 2018 images, and don’t forget that all these are collected in the Inktober 2018 Art Book, available now!