Inktober 2018

So Far So Good

We’re 17 days into Inktober 2018 and so far, I’m keeping up. It’s been a challenge keeping pace and some things in my daily schedule that aren’t an immediate rush have been put on hold. But I thought I’d take the opportunity to run through how things are going so far and some of the challenges I’ve experienced to date.

Inktober 2018 Prompts

This is technically the first time I’m participating in Inktober. I briefly considered not participating, but since I hyped up Inktober 2018 in the past few posts, I figured I’d better put my money where my mouth is. Now keep in mind that I’ve done a daily sketch for an entire year before and I did post during Inktober 2014, but it was without the daily prompts. For me, the prompts have made things a bit more challenging. In 2014, I was just drawing an animal a day. Now I actually have to consider what I’m going to draw in terms of a given word. There are already several instances where I was forced to draw something other than an animal.

Talk about stepping outside the ol’ comfort zone! But progress comes from the challenges in life and so I’m pushing forward.

My weapons of choice for this year’s Inktober challenge.

As I mentioned, the first challenge for me was the prompts. The second was finding a suitable pen. In a previous post I mentioned using a Pentel RSVP, but they tend to blob up quite a bit so I searched for something else. I ended up using a PaperMate 1.0m and a Bic Round Stic F. Two of the cheapest office supply pens on the market. And my experience with them so far is pretty decent for Inktober purposes despite the occasional skipping. That being said, if I were doing commissions, I’d probably be looking for something that performs a little more consistently.

White Gelly Roll 0.8 to make my whites pop.

The third challenge I faced was getting whites to pop on sketchbook pages that are slightly more than off-white. The fix for that problem was easy. I purchased a 3-pack of white gel pens. This is an item I would normally never buy since I don’t typically use ink. Also, gel pens are not archival, meaning they will discolor over time. So even if I did work in ink, I wouldn’t be able to use gel pens for commissions. But for Inktober 2018, I made an exception.

So, that’s where I’m at so far. 17 days in, 14 more to go. If you haven’t already, click on the Instagram link below to follow my progress as we continue through the last half of October.

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