Why You Should Participate in Inktober

My reason for deciding to participate in Inktober this year was one of personal improvement.   I recognized I needed to improve my drawing skills, and realized Inktober would be just the thing to do it with.  Having never participated before, I was a little apprehensive to whether I'd actually be able to create an inked drawing every day for 31 days. 

I have to be honest and say that not every day was easy, and some days I ended up with an inked drawing which was embarrassingly horrible.  But at least I had the satisfaction of getting the bad drawings out of my system, and was also pretty happy to have produced other drawings I'm quite proud of. 

There were a number of things I learned along the way.  I wanted to share and (hopefully) inspire you to join next year.

Benefits

1.)  Increased ability to visualize what I want to draw before I put pencil/pen to paper.

The principles of Permanence and Commitment

Permanence

In the digital realm, there is no drawing surface to wear out or damage by too much erasing or over-drawing.  There are also 'undo' features and practically endless layers to use to try out different strokes and lines.  As a consequence, I had become over-dependent on figuring out my problems externally in a digital program rather than internally in my mind.  My imagination, or ability to visualize what I wanted to draw or paint, had become soft and mushy.
Because I can only erase or make marks so many times on paper before ruining its surface, I had to learn to visualize and plan out what I was going to draw in my mind first, and couldn't rely on endlessly (and sometimes aimlessly) scribbling on the paper.  I recognized drawing on paper (because of its limitations) uses and strengthens my mind more than drawing in a digital program.

Commitment 

 Once I got into inking on paper, I had to learn to commit to my lines.  (Just as stated above, there is no safety net of 'undos' or unlimited layers for me to mess around on.)  When using a pencil, subtle details can be sometimes be fudged, but an ink line (or black area) is either there or not. Using ink forced me to really think about each line I was adding to a drawing, and where I wanted the black/white areas to be.  I had to think hard about each mark, and then commit to making it and living with my decision.

2.)  Greater hand/eye co-ordination.  Being able to visualize what I want only gets me so far.  It's also great to then be able to represent those mental visuals through accurate marks on the paper.  Just through drawing a lot hand/eye co-ordination is improved.

3.)  Greater sensitivity to mark-making. This improves how I handle a pencil to sketch, and later, how I use a pen (or brush pen if you're awesome) to finish it off.  The variety of marks I can make with an actual pencil or pen will always be thousands of times greater, and more expressive, than whatever I'll be able to get out of a digital program.  Sensitivity to this adds character and clarity to my drawings.

4.) More drawings means better drawing skills, period.  It also means getting those bad drawings out of my system quicker in the process. Since I normally gravitate towards painting over drawing, drawing allows me to move on to new challenges, new subject matter, new experimentation and practice, much faster.

Advice/tips

1.)  Keep the first drawing simple

2.)  keep the second drawing simple

3.)  keep every drawing in between simple  ;)

I found it best to keep each daily drawing very simple from the start of Inktober to the finish.  This was not an easy thing for me to do, however.  I like challenges and found myself getting bored with simple subjects and ideas. However, I discovered myself getting into a bind when I tried to start outdoing what I'd been doing the previous day or week.  I imagine this is what causes many to drop out of Inktober before the month's over.  Keeping it simple throughout Inktober allowed me to keep a steady, manageable pace -which I found particularly useful due to the fact that not every day was the same schedule -especially weekends, which I sometimes found surprisingly to be the hardest days to produce an inked sketch.

4.)  Figure out all the details, and also where all the lights and darks will be, before you start inking.  It's much easier to figure this out with a pencil first.  If you try to figure that out when in the inking stage, you are guaranteed to run into some ugly situations.

5.)  Keep crosshatching to a minimum (unless you really know what you're doing) and try instead to stick to black against white shape-making.  Besides keeping your drawing really clean, this will help you really think about composition, and how you will be directing the viewers eye around in your image.

6.)  If you have a collection of 'precious' art supplies you just can't seem to get around to using,  this is an excellent exercise to break them in with.  Sure, you may make several bad drawing with them, (in fact, most drawings you make with them may be horrible at first) but I guarantee you will feel better about fumbling around and making a bunch of bad drawings with your 'special' art supplies, than having never using them at all.  Plus, after you've used up those 'special' art supplies, celebrate!  -Then go out and buy some more to make more drawings with!