Inktober 2017 Lessons Learned

Back in August, I had made the decision to commit to taking part in the daily ink drawing challenge known as Inktober (done over the course of the month October). I reflected on the previous year's lessons and felt that this time I was going to handle it differently.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post about what I learned from taking part in Inktober, last year sometimes I felt like stopping, sometimes I didn't know what to draw, and overall it felt like it was a bumbled affair. Here are some things I feel I did right that made this year's Inktober go much smoother, enabling me to complete the challenge without missing a day or having to play catch up.

Inktober Day 28.

I Planned Well In Advance

From making that initial decision in August, I then made a few broader decisions which set a few things in motion. I decided that I wanted to depict some characters, props, and a few locations that were all set inside a single world. I wasn't going to tell a linear story but rather create some concept art that could inspire a story for a game or comic that I could continue to work on after the Inktober challenge was done (if I wanted to that is).

I delved into my graveyard of ideas and failed or abandoned projects from the past, and dug up a short story I had started back in 2012. While I no longer liked its initial narrative, I did see some scope to expand on the ideas I did like (namely the creatures and conceptual location).

Scans from my sketchbook. Development sketches of a prop and one of the characters.

Another scan from the sketchbook. This time, a more refined ink sketch of the bird character I was calling, at the time, 'The Projectionist."

By the start of September, I had a rough assortment of characters with accompanying props and environments related to them listed out, each being a potential drawing for the challenge. As the month progressed I built a mood board of reference photos and collected them together on Pinterest., I also began sketching gesture drawings in my sketchpad and was beginning to define some designs of the characters with more refined pencil sketches.

When October materialised, I knew exactly who and what I was going to draw on that first day and, in all honesty, I was really excited to commit my ideas to paper in ink. Thanks to all of my planning I had the first seven days conceptually tied down and the following fourteen more or less loosely defined. As the days rolled on, planning ideas for the later days took place simultaneously as ink drawings got done in the evenings.

Inktober Day 1. The final design of the bird character that I executed on the first day of the Inktober challenge.

I Had A Solid Routine

The routine came about in the second week of the challenge when I went back to my day job at the studio after having a week's holiday. With those first seven days, I had the luxury of time to get an ink drawing done a day but come the weeks after, I knew my time would be limited. My routine during the weekdays became something like this:

- On the train in the morning, I would sketch out the line work of the final design for that day's entry on a piece of artboard.

- On the train home in the evening I would sketch out rough concepts, studies, ideas, and compositions in my sketchbook for the next day's Inktober so that when I got on the train the next morning, I knew what I was going to pencil out.

- When I got home from work that day after my long commute, I would then spend the evening time inking and getting the piece done before midnight.

Developmental sketches of a location in the world setting. Three concepts of a cinema exterior.

Inktober day 24. The final executed ink drawing of the cinema exterior.

And this went on through the month except for on weekends when I had more undisturbed time to plan and do the inking in one session. Weekends were also reserved for more complex or physically bigger drawings for the same reason.

The combination of making those broader decisions at the start, planning, and a daily routine really saw me through this project without the issues I faced last year. I think the subtext of these lessons is that if you really want to do something like a personal project (or anything for that matter), you find the time in your day to do it... Not the excuses to not do it.

Developmental sketches in the sketch book for a few day's worth of entries.

Inktober Day 20.

Inktober Day 21.

Inktober Day 22.

Inktober Day 23.

Other Observations

In the interest of full disclosure, this postmortem wouldn't be complete without the inclusion of some of the problems I faced this time as well as some other observations I made. Even with last year's lessons in mind and all of my forethought, Inktober 2017 was still a challenge to complete and here is why:

Social Life Took A Back Seat

I am an extrovert and like to have quite a full social calendar. Over the course of October, I put the Inktober project above nearly all else which meant that I wasn't as social as I usually am. This was quite a personal challenge for me. On a couple of occasions I turned up to arrangements, I said no to staying out for drinks, and also didn't plan to go out to anything in the evenings. If you want to do something like a personal project, you not only find the time to do it but you make the time.

This sometimes requires making a decision as to whether you have a drink with all your colleagues, or you go home and draw a dude with twigs sticking out of his head (which was one Friday evening choice)

Tiredness Set In

While the routine ensured the daily drawing was done and on time, the working days became longer, and quite a few times inking ate into my sleep time. I don't like it when notable artists condone working in place of getting the right amount of sleep one needs to function normally, yet for this month only, I went to bed later than I'd have liked to make sure that that day's drawing got done.

This, of course, had a knock on effect the next day and I have to admit, my caffeine intake spiked over the course of the month. Towards the end, I began to feel the effects of burn out setting in, and on a number of occasions the temptation to stop crept upon me. The latter weekends of the month meant catching up on a lot of sleep lost in the week, which isn't a great way to go on. It was good that Inktober only lasted a month because if I had have carried on at that pace for say three months, I would have crashed out.

Inktober Day 5.

Inktober Day 19.

Ambition

I was a lot more ambitious this year, not just in the size and scope of the project I wanted to depict but also in the physical size of some of the drawings. I wanted to push my character designs further in ways I hadn't before and really inject another level of more considered detail to them. However, with that said, from day 15 onwards, all ink drawings were done on the smaller pieces of board.

I wouldn’t say every drawing was a success either. There are a fair few pieces that feel rigid to me and some have glaring mistakes. But such is the nature of working in inks. When it was all said and done, the completion of the challenge felt super rewarding. I adopted the mindset of ‘finished, not perfect,’ and that meant I had a small body of drawings all set inside a single world.

Post-Inktober, planning for phase 2 of the project has begun and after a little break to work on some other, smaller projects, I hope to get back to this strange little world I’ve begun to build.

The full set of this year’s Inktober entries can be seen at my website here.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. If it was any help to you, or you have your own lessons, and thoughts about the Inktober challenge, please leave a comment and let me know!

Lloyd Harvey
www.lloydharvey.co.uk