October art challenges have become a big hit among art communities over the last few years. Starting with Inktober around 2016 - a daily prompt list to inspire artists to draw every day for the entire month of October, artists around the world have taken to pen and ink to create beautiful traditional drawings. Since then, many artists have since started their own spin on the world of October art challenges, such as “drawtober”, “doodletober”, “witchtober”, and everything else ending in “tober”. All of them with rules that tend to be a bit more lax and welcoming than the official counterpart, including digital artists and even writers or crafters to join in. While I had done the official Inktober challenge twice in the past, it seemed time to try a new angle. I especially had a specific theme in mind that I already felt inspired to draw, so I set out to build a prompt list to reflect that. While I was thinking of things I wanted to draw, I did make sure to throw in some wild cards that I didn’t immediately have an idea for to keep a sense of challenge. I was really excited to draw lots of magical and Halloween-inspired things! I did a ton of prep-work through the second half of September to get my sketches done. But aside from that, I really was drawing on every day of October. I even fell behind some days and had to draw multiple prompts to catch up (or to get ahead when I knew a busy weekend was approaching!) Below are the final results. All of them are scanned pen and marker artwork. I did some digital clean-up and color effect on some of my favorites. Now I’ll share some of my thoughts...Since I mostly draw digitally in recent years, it’s good to go back to the basics every once in a while. I realized how lazy I had gotten with all the shortcuts digital art provides! It’s definitely a little humbling, hahaha.
Since these are basically high-quality sketches, I am thinking of fully colorizing some of them digitally if I find the time to do so! I wrote in my previous blog article, “How to Fix Your Art Block.”, that art challenges are a great way to practice drawing with deadlines and draw something you might not have thought of otherwise. It’s also a good way to increase your skill! After making sure to get a picture done every day, I did notice a significant change in how I was drawing. The time I was spending fixing things that looked strange got shorter and shorter as I kept going and the process became way more enjoyable. However, I did start feeling burned out by the second half of the month. Not because I was tired of drawing, exactly… but because I was tired of the theme and really wanted to draw something new. Maybe it was because I had sketched everything so far ahead that nothing was new and exciting to me anymore? I do wonder how to improve this because if I hadn’t sketched all of the prompts beforehand, I would not have been able to finish them all in time! It starts to come down to quality vs quantity. To sacrifice making quality art and stay on time for the deadline? Or scramble to draw low-quality doodles that I may not enjoy looking back on later? It is called a “challenge”, after all. Overall, it was a fun learning experience. I’m glad I was able to finish it; I have so many nice pieces of art to look at that I’m really happy with! I may think about doing it again next year with new prompts. I could start a new tradition! It would be great if others joined in too. What do you think of art challenges? Have you tried it before? Did you manage to finish it, or burn out halfway? Share your thoughts in the comments! Until next time. ☆
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