Choose to Do What Works for You

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?

A Portrait Challenge

This portrait was from a photo that was put out as a challenge from a Facebook Group, Sketchbooker's Society, that I belong to. It was a stunning photograph to begin with which made the drawing process so much more enjoyable. The man's features were very interesting. Figuring out how to draw his grey blond beard with a black pen was a good exercise. I love the way this turned out!