This Inktober felt different
Inktober is one of the most famous illustration challenges we have. It is not easy to finish it or to feel accomplished doing it. Austin Kleon just shared a really good post about how these 30-day challenges can turn a daily small thing into eventually something with substance and it really resonated with me.
This is the third year I tried to do this challenge but it’s the first time I feel I’ve done it “right”. The first year, I did some pieces that were okay, but at the end of the month, I wasn’t super proud of anything and I left the experience feeling empty.
The second time around, I decided to put a lot of effort in it and create something meaningful and complicated. At first, it was wonderful and I’m still super proud of what I did do, but a whole month of it became quickly overwhelming. Life (always) happens and I never got to finish it. It left me with the lingering feeling of failure.
Inktober illustration from 2017 “Borrowed Burdens”
A few lessons I’ve learned for this time around:
It’s for me
One of the hardest parts of this challenge is that there are so many wonderful artists doing exactly the same thing, especially if you are following the prompts. It can be hard not to compare to others but if you find a reason/idea that is interesting means something personally, it is easier to keep going.
The simpler the better
This is a creative marathon, not a sprint. This was the first one I did and I loved the simplicity and the infinite possibilities it allowed as a series. Deciding on something I knew it would be easy to do commit on a daily basis took out the pressure of it.
Flexibility
I did not do one illustration every day necessarily but I did paint almost every day. I sketched them in batches (like 5 or 6 in one go) and would paint them in batches and finalize them too. That gave me the flexibility to have time on the creative stage and just enjoy paiting them on most of the other days. It gave me choices of where to spend my daily time on it and it was super freeing.
Fun!
Especially when we are creating things for social media, having fun usually is not a priority and that is why I believe it is so easy to burn out. We live our lives how we live our days so.. nowadays I choose to create things that make me happy.
This one month experiment is a good example of how the road on the creative process can be quite bumpy. If you go in expecting to get it right on the first try, you can resent it when you don’t. If you can’t finish it, you feel like you can’t do it at all. But if keep trying through different paths, adapt how you think you should approach it, someday, somehow (and usually not what you envisioned at first) it will work.
I would love to know from you if you did Inktober this year and how you feel about it. And if you have any