The Unknown

The Inktober Challenge is fast approaching.  I stumbled across the challenge last year and took up the half marathon challenge – producing an ink drawing every other day.

Inktober is a 31 day drawing challenge.  The scary part is having to do one drawing a day.  With work and small business commitments this definitely challenges my simplifying skills.  Last year, time-poorness and trying to meet the half marathon challenge, essentially pushed me to develop a new genre of art.

I started the Inktober Challenge 2016 with some quick ink drawings of platypus using a mixture of Quink and Indian ink, a reed and water.

Then I tried some different animals: a wombat, koala, echidna, wallaby and a spotted quoll.

Then I started adding a little colour to the ink drawings.

This year, I’d like to try to do the full Inktober challenge.  I’ve got a few things in my favour.  Firstly, Inktober starts on Sunday, October 1^st, which just so happens to be the Hobart Urban Sketching meet-up day, so I should be able to start with a bang and October 2^nd is the start of two weeks of school holidays, which should give me some extra time to be able to achieve this goal.

My personal goals with this challenge are:

1. Produce a drawing every day
2. Draw some of the topics on the Official Prompt List (I didn’t draw anything from the prompt list last year)
3. Develop/improve my urban sketching skills – use this challenge to help motivate me to get outside and draw more buildings
4. Not only draw every day, but post the drawings everyday

You never know what can come out of these things.  I had never anticipated that it would lead to another line of art that I sell at my Salamanca Market stall.  My initial ink drawings evolved into watercolour paintings with evidence of the Inktober Challenge embedded in them, ink outlines drawn with a reed and some paintings with integrated ink work.

Ink work integrated into painting.  The words defend, conserve, protect are written in the shape of bubbles.

I wonder what is going to come out of the challenge this year?  An unknown at this point in time …

Who else is doing the Inktober Challenge?

Here’s the Official Prompt List

1. Swift                 Divided                            3. Poison                              4. Underwater
2. Long                 Sword                              7. Shy                                    8. Crooked
3. Screech         10. Gigantic                         11. Run                                 12. Shattered
4. Teeming            14. Fierce                     15. Mysterious                          16. Fat
5. Graceful             18. Filthy                    19. Cloud                                    20. Deep
6. Furious               22. Trial                     23. Juicy                                     24. Blind
7. Ship                     26. Squeak                 27. Climb                                 28. Fall
8. United                  30. Found                 31. Mask

Happy inking and thanks for reading.