No 6: Inktober, Days 1-7

This is my second attempt at completing Inktober. I also tried last year and failed spectacularly because I was on maternity leave with a 5 month old baby who wasn’t going to learn to sleep through the night for another 9 months.

For those of you who don’t know, Inktober is a month long challenge, where artists produce an ink drawing every day for all of October inspired by the official prompt list. Of course, those are the official guidelines but the only real rule is that there are no rules. People use all kinds of different mediums or work digitally. They follow their own prompt lists. Some artists create their own version of the challenge for their followers to participate in. Suffice to say, October is a fun (and exhausting) month to be an artist.

This year I decided to stay close the original spirit of Inktober. I’m using the official prompt list and I’m drawing and painting with ink. I also wanted to focus on creating more illustrative works that tell some story, which is definitely what’s slowing me down this year. My drawing process is simpler and quicker this year, but I spend a lot of time just thinking what it is I should draw for each prompt, and then looking up references (or creating them myself) and planning a composition.

I was not off to a good start. The first prompt was DREAM and I wanted to draw a mum and her baby sleeping together the way Zoya and I slept so many times (but Vic never took a picture of that so I had to trawl the internet for a reference photo!). I was very tired, I rushed it and gave this mum very long arms. Well, it’s so she can hold her baby better!

The second prompt was SPIDERS. I only noticed it was plural after I completed my drawing, so I only have one spider there. Here I thought of ‘Babie Lato’, a Polish phrase that means both - Indian Summer, and a phenomenon that can be observed then: ‘ballooning’ or ‘kiting’ (the way spiders travel through air floating on the threads they are releasing). This picture shows the end of Babie Lato.

The third prompt was PATH and you can see my drawing at the top of this newsletter. I drew my daughter with her trusted companion, the Bunny. Alone. At night. In the forest. I immediately got sad I drew her like this, all alone, so now I prefer to imagine she is looking at me, I’m standing there, just out of the shot. This is probably my favourite piece so far. I am obsessed with forests, so there will be more trees and forest still. Often before going to sleep I imagine myself walking through a forest to calm my mind. I miss my childhood summers when I spent a lot of time in forests, including living in a tent in a forest for a month.

The fourth prompt was DODGE and I spent a whole day trying to figure out what to draw. I ended up with some forest-adjacent theme again.

The fifth prompt was MAP and this is supposed to depict me and my daughter. Me nervously trying to consult a map while Zoya is just off, following her heart (holding her bunny of course). And there is a forest to the left. I like the energy of this piece.

The sixth prompt was GOLDEN, so I made an exception and I used some golden metallic marker. The goose that laid golden eggs was just as surprised as everyone else. She was actually looking forward to motherhood and that dream was taken away from her and now she’s going to feed someone’s greed instead.

The seventh prompt was DRIP, and I drew a man who should be in bed. What’s he doing on some country road? I don’t know, but please note I forced myself not to draw a forest here.

So there you have it. The first seven drawings. I am already running out of steam and I doubt I will complete Inktober in time. (I am still occasionally working on the last year’s one because I optimistically labeled 31 pages in my sketchbook with prompts).

This is certainly a great exercise. I’m focusing on composition and values. I’m learning how to control ink. But I’m missing colour and missing sketching things as they are, without having to create a story behind. Sometimes you just want to draw a dog, you know what I mean?