Choose to Do What Works for You

October 08, 2020 by Anya Toomre in Blog, Creativity Coaching

Peace Statue at Nagasaki, Japan, drawn for Inktober 2017, Day 7

As I’m writing this post, the second week of Inktober (a challenge of doing 31 days of ink drawings) has begun and is well underway. There’s an official list of daily one word prompts as well as many, many variations on themed prompts. Look for #Inktober2020 on social media to see some examples. There are some really creative drawings to be found!

I love pen and ink work so I have participated at various times over the past several years. I love the idea of Inktober but I’ve never actually completed the full 31 days. Last year some of you may remember, I made an animals list from the book Life of Pi. I think I’m on Day 22 of those. Still not done. The year before that, I was drawing from my pictures from my time living in Japan. I only got to Day 7. It’s like failing on New Year’s Resolutions or trying to change habits.

I’m disappointed that I haven’t finished these Inktobers. How hard can it be to do a daily drawing? It turns out, for me, it’s a challenge.

I decided this year that I would adjust the parameters to work with the way I work.

I draw and draw a lot, but I don’t tend to finish drawings in one day. Experience has shown me that. I tend to draw fairly slowly and add a lot of detail. Working off of Inktober prompts means needing to complete a drawing a day. That has been my stumbling block. I decided instead to draw in ink everyday for 30 minutes and make daily progress on a project rather than completing daily drawings.

I love architecture and drawing details. I was in Amsterdam in 2019. I drew some while there, but I took a lot of pictures so I could draw from them later.

So for this year’s Inktober project, I am drawing everyday in ink for 30 minutes and I’m drawing Amsterdam from my photographs. I’m very pleased to have figured out a way to make meeting the challenge work for me. (You can see my progress on FaceBook and Instagram).

Is there some way you can tweak a challenge to work with your nature rather than fight it?

More Inktober Drawings

November 15, 2019 by Anya Toomre

Here are some more of my animals from my “Life of Pi” that I did for Inktober. These are the blind contour and find drawings for animals and Days 4, 5, and 6.

#inktober #inktober2019 "#lifeofpianimals #penandink

Start of Inktober 2019 Drawings

October 28, 2019 by Anya Toomre

I love the idea of Inktober - 31 days of drawings done with ink. Using watercolor or colored pencil is allowed but the idea is to do mostly with ink. I never seem to get my way all through the month drawing every day, but I try. There is an official list of prompts below.

For my Inktober challenge, however, I came up with the first 31 or so animals mentioned in the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel. All of those were acquired by page 14 in the book. There are lots more animals mentioned!

I may or may not get to completing this challenge but I have done the first 10 days. A drawing technique that I like to use when approaching a new subject is to do a blind contour drawing of the picture. This means that while I have my pen on the page, I only look at what I want to draw and don’t look at the page. Blind contours are great for getting practice seeing. Drawing is all about drawing what you see and not what you think you see.

Here are my first few inktober drawings with their blind contour drawings next to them. It’s kind of fun to compare the blind one with the later sketch. Sometimes they match really well, sometimes I’m channelling my inner Picasso!

#inktober #inktober2019 #lifeofpianimals #penandink