Good Lessons I Learned from Inktober

1. Drawing is murder on the neck

A few days into Inktober, I got a headache on the back of my head. This was a new experience for me because I usually only get them on the front or left side of the head, and these are typically light-induced, or from caffeine withdrawal, lack of sleep, or sinus related. When this headache persisted chronically day after day, I analysed my behaviour and the only thing different was the daily drawing.

I typically paint every day, but drawing is different. There are different muscles involved. Painting is more… ‘flowy’ for lack of a better word. Drawing is more precise. It’s detail orientated. I press slightly harder to get the right variance of line weight for every stroke. I’m also having to do a lot of repetitive motion – an area that could have been one big brushstroke, now takes 10 thin lines packed closely together.

All these things add up when you’re in your forties.

When I realised it was the drawing putting strain on my neck muscles, and in turn causing the weird headache, I started doing some neck exercises. For interest’s sake, these are two routines I’ve been trying with some success:

• Tension Headache Exercises. Stress Headache Relief in 4 Minutes.
• Real Time Full Body Stretching Routine – Ask Doctor Jo

I’ve also tried to perfect my drawing posture by making a makeshift stand for my tablet – I prop my Bible under it on the far end to create an angle. My posture was already much better than many artists because I use a screenless drawing tablet (this one) allowing me to look straight ahead at my monitor, as opposed to tilting my head down to look at a tablet screen. I think the latter would have left me immobile. I know from experience when I draw in bed using Procreate on my ipad, I have to prop myself up on pillows to try and keep my neck straight, and even then I can’t overdo it.

2. Brushes count

Over the years, I’ve witnessed many established artists disparage people for enquiring what brush they used on a specific piece. It’s like they get offended because they think the person is implying that the brush is doing all the work. The usual response is that brushes don’t matter, and a good artist can create something great with a simple round brush. Of course that’s true. I mean, if you’re skilled and patient enough you can probably make a beautiful piece using a mouse in MS paint, but why would you? It’s MUCH more enjoyable using a brush that responds well to your needs and easily makes the kind of marks you enjoy, so it’s worth it to explore different brushes and also try making your own brushes. It’s not that hard, and once you master the brush engine of one program, you can more easily figure out how to do it in others.

I recently created some custom inking brushes for Rebelle. In the past I’ve only managed one or two ink drawings for inktober, but these brushes were so enjoyable to use that I didn’t want to stop using them. I hadn’t even purposed to do the full month of drawings, but before I knew it I was so far in, that I thought “Damn, let me just keep going because I can see the finish line, and I’m having so much fun”.

3. I can use reference but I don’t have to

I don’t feel creative every day, but as a professional illustrator, I put the work in anyway. If you want to eat, you just have to suck it up and do the work regardless of how you feel. Some days it’s easy to conceptualize, and sketch things purely from imagination, and it comes out great, but other times, in lieu of inspiration, I need good precise reference.

I think it’s important to realize that neither way is better or more correct, so long as the outcome is what you intend. Some days I let my imagination fly like a child with a crayon and no rent to pay, while other days I used software (the Steam version of ArtPosePro) to pose and perfectly light the character before even starting the sketch. I won’t be made to feel guilty about using or not using reference, especially not on a personal fun project like Inktober, and neither should you.

4. I can be diligent and flexible at the same time

I’m one of those people that are probably too responsible. If I say I’m going to do something, and I happen to get leprosy and my hand falls off, I’ll go ahead and do the thing I said I would do with my other hand, and I’ll do it on time. My husband frequently has to remind me to be kind to myself. With that firmly in mind, I didn’t make any promises about completing inktober, but at the same time, I really wanted to, so the two things I did that really kept me on track without any undue pressure is
1) planning ahead and 2) being flexible.

Some weekends, I’d do up to 5 drawings, knowing that I might be too tired or busy during the week, so getting it done sooner would take the pressure off. Even so, if I didn’t feel like it, I’d happily take a break to play some Path of Exile or read a book (I’m currently re-reading the Riftwar Legacy series by Raymond E Feist).

The other thing that helped keep my enthusiasm going for Inktober is that I decided if I wasn’t excited by the official prompt, I would free myself to draw something from one of the myriad other daily prompts happening in October. So I ended up with a mixture of Inktober, IFXtober, and HuionHauntober, and some days I was lucky enough that the prompts overlapped. For example on day 11, the Inktober prompt was “snacks” and the HuionHauntober prompt was “fruit”, so I got to label my drawing of a crow eating a berry as both. Simple pleasures 🙂

5. Post it everywhere

As I mechanically post my art on social media, I have no hope that anything will come from it. I’ve been shadow banned and shafted by the algorithm so much, that I fully expect NO ONE to see anything I post. On one hand this is healthy because at least I’m not wrapping up my sense of self-worth in engagement that I have no control over, but I often wonder if I’m wasting time posting at all.

I especially feel this way about Xitter (refuse to call it X), where Elon has made it into a town square for rich people – if you don’t pay for the blue tick (which has no regionally fair pricing) then your posts get stifled. Elon calls it “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach”. I translate that to “the opinions of peasants don’t matter”. So imagine my surprise when the portrait I did for day 4 of Inktober got amost no engagement, but one of the very few people that saw it, liked it so much she wanted one for herself. She ended up commissioning me and I made a friend and a happy client. So, I guess I’ll continue just posting my stuff everywhere because you just never know.

6. Some people are pathetic cheaters

Unlike #mermay and some other monthly art challenges, there are no prizes or monetary gain from doing inktober, and yet pathetic losers still cheat. If you follow the official Inktober instagram account, you’ll know that for each day, they select a few drawings they liked and showcase them in a post. One of the drawings showcased for Inktober Day 29 (navigator), caught my eye. It was so good, I clicked on the artist name so I could give them a follow. After following, I scrolled down their page to look at their other art and I grew very suspicious. The older work was very amateurish and clearly lacked a lot of basic skills, like anatomy, and then suddenly they have all these amazing inktober drawings.

In art, nobody has skill jumps like that. It takes a long time to get good and it happens in gradual increments, so I ran a few of the inktober drawings through Hive Moderation and I was getting up to 99.9% certainty scores that they were AI. So this guy is blatantly cheating with nothing to gain except popularity on social media, and he’s also cheating himself of the feeling of accomplishment he could get by doing it himself, learning and getting better. Instead he just outsourced his creativity and pride to a bot. And the bot is only that good because of all the phenomenally good art that was stolen in order to train it. Sad and lame.

7. I’m actually not bad at this

As I said previously, I’m primarily a painter, so I was pleasantly surprised at how some of my drawings turned out. The thing about doing the same thing every day is you’re bound to get better. There were days where I was tired or didn’t have that much time on my hands so it’s not a clear visual improvement from day 1 to day 31, but I know I learned techniques and improved a bit over the course of the month. I feel it was time well spent. I’ll end off the article with a gallery of my Inktober drawings. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed drawing them…