When I first looked at the 2023 prompt list it was terrifyingly abstract! Creativity loves boundaries, so I set my own, narrower, rules to help me decide what to draw each day. Since I work on board ships, I wanted to loosely tie in my drawings to an ocean theme. I also wanted to use the challenge as an opportunity to play with ways to represent water, something I have struggled with in both drawing and painting. Having this focus pushed me to try things I certainly wouldn’t have done otherwise. I have found new techniques that work not only in ink, but that I can also incorporate into my watercolour paintings.
In the end, as I suspect might be typical for an over-ambitious Inktober novice, I spent far too long on each drawing, and managed to complete about one every two days. Some of that was down to time spent searching for references and coming up with ideas, but mainly it was due to rendering some of the pieces very slowly. I don’t regret sacrificing on the quantity, since the challenge for me was about learning new skills and briefly side-tracking myself from real life – nothing like some painstaking cross-hatching to hold your attention on the paper in front of you.
Good luck to anyone taking on the challenge this year! I hope you enjoy the chance to experiment and play with ink media.
