Inktober2023: Proactive Procrastination

 OR:

Pick It Up and Phone It In

I've been dealing with some motivation problems of late, evidenced in part by my absence from this blog. I participated in a drawing challenge early last year and I really liked how it went... until I didn't. Inktober of that year was rather anemic. I was only doing a few drawings, mostly leftovers from other projects or miscellaneous challenges that were only Inktober-adjacent. Overall, though, my motivation was shot. I just about got through the winter in terms of making my annual holiday card, but I felt totally spent after that. 

It's not because of the onset of AI-based art programs like MidJourney and Stable Diffusion, though it certainly doesn't help. DeviantART has become a bit of a minefield. I'll think I've discovered a new artist and fervently peruse their catalog only to find they're using AI on basically their entire portfolio. That can be very disheartening. 

Fast forward to the first of September when the Inktober 2023 official prompt list drops. Leading up to the day, I was thinking about how I would explain to everyone that I wasn't going to participate in the event this year, that I really needed some time away to think about things. Seeing the list at first didn't inspire anything in me. Actually, that's a lie. It inspired despair. My motivation issues got put on full blast when I saw that list and felt absolutely no drive of any sort to make anything of it. I'd been making some vector pieces off and on in the months before, mostly text-based pieces, puns and turns of phrase, things like that. About 2 weeks later, I took a look at the list again and focused on a single word from the dead center of the list, halfway through the month. 

I got an idea. 

It was the word "demon." I was looking at the shape of the letters and got an idea to write out the word but with a pitchfork taking the place of the "m." I'd been watching some tutorials for Inkscape and all the various text-based effects one can do with a little pre-planning and some basic tools. So, on a lunch break from work, I opened Inkscape, and made my little bit of word art, Demon with both the "m" and the "n" being replaced by barbed pitchforks. 

3 days later, I had all 31 prompts done. 

Actually, it was more like 4 because I took a break after the second day. Some were straightforward, some were a little more elaborate, but all 31 were effectively in the can. I had even thought of going back a few days later and sprucing up a few, but I decided against it. I was pretty damn impressed with myself though I do say so my... self. There was no pre-planning, no juggling of work and play throughout the month of October. My only real responsibility would be posting the illustrations on a schedule. 

In years past, my rule was that I could come up with ideas and sketches the moment the prompt list dropped. I could start actual work on the illustration as soon as the weekend before the 1st, so I'd have something to post that morning at the very least. This year, I threw that workflow completely out the window and more or less by complete accident. I even thought to take it a step further and try to automate the posting process. 

Instagram has an option available to all its users to toggle between a personal account and a professional account. There's no cost or anything, and you can cancel at any time. One of the biggest perks is the ability to schedule posts up to 75 days in advance, descriptions and tags and all. I thought I had it all figured out... until I didn't. When I post to Instagram, I'll also have it post to Facebook, where most of my family spends their social media time. Many of my relatives look forward to my Inktober posts, so I was more than a little disappointed when I found that scheduling an Instagram post did not include the option to mirror the post on Facebook. 

So, I'm still posting the images on the day, though some may end up getting scheduled anyway depending on how busy I may get on a given day, if I have a rushed morning or something like that. Like I said, it's disappointing, but hardly the worst thing in the world. The first full week of Inktober is done as I write this, and the response has been so-so compared to years past. I'm not bothered by this. I expected it in a way; word art doesn't exactly set the world on fire. It may get a good chuckle here and there, but it's just visual metaphors through text, like concrete poetry. 

And that is how I told myself no, and got the job done anyway and with time to spare. 

Inktober 2018 recap

Boy, this one post a month no matter what model is slipping through my fingers like the finest sand that's ever been sanded. My Wordpress page is a little better, but not by much. It's not for a lack of trying; there's no shortage of drafts and notes for entries. It's also not any sort of vanity issue; my perfectionism is firmly in check, along with any self doubt. It's simply been a matter of, "Eh, why bother?" combined with, "I don't really miss it." 

Anyway, Inktober was a runaway success compared to last year, though I think I misjudged the best platform. Last year, Instagram seemed to be the hoppin' and happenin' place to be in terms of where all the coolest stuff was going up. Instead, my favourites gallery on DeviantART got nice and full along with my watchlist. As for my Instagram posts, which got a fair response on par with last year, I'm happy to report I did not miss a single post. I was far more efficient about it than last year on top of doing two prompt lists at once. In fact, I made more than the 62 total drawings, though that's because the prompts "prick and prickly" which fell on the same day are essentially four panels of a comic. 

On the whole, the biggest hiccup or obstacle to overcome was my 53 Pencil sort of giving up the ghost and refusing to work with Paper. The tip finally wore out, and all of the replacements were so stiff I had to basically trick the tablet into connecting, and that was just so I could use the smudge tool. In the end, I decided to give in to the Apple ecosystem and buy their Pencil. I'm a little grumpy, but not compared to when a stylus I back on Kickstarter finally arrived and demonstrated to me in no uncertain terms that product designers should not do their own technical support. At least now I can say I have a crowdfunding horror story with my name on it; the other didn't reach its goal and the first worked out like gangbusters. 

In the grand scheme of things, whatever stylus works for you is the one that works for you. Thus far, I'll admit the Pencil has grown on me, but I am going to recommend getting a sleeve for it, namely one from Griffin. It's got a cap that effectively turns the butt of your Pencil into an eraser depending on how you set up the various drawing apps. 

Per last year, every Inktober post was uploaded to Artstation in a portfolio. 

Has kind of a nice "The New Yorker" vibe to it. Oh, but I can dream.

Countdown To Inktober 2018

I've officially become that guy, that guy who uses spreadsheets for almost everything imaginable. I tried setting this up as a checklist in Evernote, but it wasn't particularly convenient. 

It's currently the 20th of September, which makes it exactly ten days until the start of this years Inktober. This will be my third outing, I'm very excited for it, and maybe I'll get some of you to join in if you haven't already by talking about it here. 
For those who arrived late, Inktober was started back in 2009 by an illustrator named Jake Parker. It's grown significantly in that time, and while there are many takes on it, but the original goes something like this: the official Inktober site publishes a list of 31 single-word drawing prompts, a slew of adjectives, nouns, and verbs. You've then got 31 days to bring each individual prompt to life through the traditional medium of ink. That's the barest of the bare bones about it, and as I said, there's no one approach as all artists are of varying technical skills, comfort zones, and work ethics. 
Obviously, the important thing is to have fun, but of equal importance is to challenge yourself, push your skills, get out of your comfort zones, and try a new work ethic. Artists have a reputation for being rather persnickety and temperamental, working in a kind of ad hoc sort of flow. While I'm firmly of the opinion that creativity is not like a faucet or light switch that can simply be flipped on or off, I don't buy into the pretentious rhetoric that it's so elusive and nebulous that forcing it in even the most passive way would vaporize it on the spot. I think that's selling yourself short. Too many people see it like the Golden Goose; finding out what makes the fowl tick will stop its ticker dead, on account of being dissected. In reality, it's more like a muscle. You can injure it, of course, and there's certainly limits to what it can do, but you won't know it until you try, but it's best to take it slow, stretch it a bit, and pace yourself. 

I like to follow the official prompt list because it's the most well-known and it creates a nice common ground to see what everyone else is doing and how everyone approaches the same challenge, often in wildly different ways. 

For this year, the challenge I've set for myself is that I'm actually doing 2 prompt lists, the official and a new one I found on Instagram through a stationery company called MosseryCo. They're the pink column of the spreadsheet, with Jake Parker's being the gray. These lists are published in the early days of September to give participants some prep time, and I'm taking full advantage of it. I mean, I've got double the workload this year, so it's for the best. Yeah, this means quantity over quality (or at least some repetition), but like NaNoWriMo (in November) it's more about the process than the results. It's about getting rid of old and bad habits while trying to get used to new and good ones. 

In terms of medium, I'm probably playing faster and looser than ever. My first year was fairly strict, I made proper, traditional ink drawings in my sketchbooks, and the only digital work involved was some color correction and lighting adjustments in post. My second year I tried a hybrid approach of using an Iskn Slate tablet to "record" my traditional drawings and then digitally paint over them. What both of these years had in common was that there was more than one occasion I made an exception to my own rules. This year, I had an idea that if there was ever a day when I couldn't come up with anything, I would look to the corresponding day on the other list and combine the two. As I've been going through the pre-planning stage, though, I haven't felt much desire to do that. While there are some common/recurring themes between the lists, they are ultimately separate entities that will be resulting in at least 62 full-fledged drawings. As for bringing those drawings to life, I'm keeping that open depending on what's best suited to the idea, but the majority of drawings will be made using Paper by 53. It's hardly the most robust drawing app. In fact, the fine folks at 53 will insist up, down, left, and right that Paper is not a drawing app, but a notetaking app geared towards more visual thinkers. It's meant for making flowcharts and Venn diagrams rather than full, proper illustrations. Of course, that never stops anyone from using it as a drawing app, hence their own hashtag #madewithpaper, but it's overall not the strength of the app. It's got limitations and even, dare I say it, some shortcomings, but that's what I love about it. 

However you decide to participate in Inktober, I'd like you to keep something in mind. To crib a phrase from Stan Lee, every year is someone's first. If this is your first, I bid you welcome, hope you meet a lot of interesting people, and overall hope you have a lot of fun. 

No True Inker (An Inktober Meditation)

2017's Inktober is closing in on its first week and despite a few technical annoyances, it's gone far smoother than anticipated. Like last year, I've been posting the finished results (and the rough sketch made on the Iskn Slate) to my Instagram, where they're immediately shared to my Facebook and Twitter. They're also being mirrored on a special Pinterest board (sans sketches) and sometimes an alternate or discarded version of a piece will be posted to DeviantART. At the end of the month, I may also post them all to my Artstation, possibly Behance as well. 

Exactly one year ago to this day, I wrote about how Inktober was as valid as any other holiday (possibly more so). I wholeheartedly stand by that and even found a few people saying the same on their own journals and social sites. Unfortunately, with this newfound solidarity comes an inevitable gaggle of snobs and purists out to ruin it for everyone, if only passive-aggressively. If anyone's ever given you a hard time about something you DIDN'T do for a holiday, you have an idea of where this is going. 

It's a mild grievance, and though it could have turned into a full argument, I decided to back off and carry on, bearing no ill will against the other person and continuing to follow their work. Besides, they have an unfortunate pairing of personality traits where they've got a very dry sense of humor but are more than a tad inept on the delivery front, so it may well entirely be a misunderstanding. I only bring it up because while that person may have had their tongue firmly-yet-obscurely in cheek, there does seem to be a bit of a fervor over whether or not participants are having a "TEH-RUE!" Inktober experience.

The teal-furred buck of the situation is, unless someone is simply posting duckface selfies with the Inktober hashtags or something equally unrelated plugging up search results (read: trolling), I'm not going to get all flustered about it, and you shouldn't either. If you're pumping out 31 drawings in 31 days from the 1st of October through the 31st, you are doing Inktober. Everything else is merely how much of a challenge you want to make it for yourself. 

This year, it seems for whatever reason there's been some thundering from atop Olympus in the form of a social media post* from Jake Parker admonishing people who don't toe the line on the "TOWOOO!" spirit of Inktober. Brad Colbow has a video showing this post and his reaction more or less mirrors mine. 

With all due respect to Mr. Parker, he may have started Inktober, but apart from due credit as coiner of the term and a snappy logo design, he doesn't own it. It exists with or without him. There's no application process and despite a few would-be pedants insisting otherwise, the original rules are fairly vague and open, with very few stipulations that could be seen as dictatorial. As for the author of that "bad habits" post, I have to ask: What if you're already a traditional artist and therefore don't technically have those bad habits this event is, according to you, meant to cure? Is the "TREW!" Inktober experience exclusively digital artists trading their screens and styluses for pen and paper? Even with the "full experience" statement at the end, this likely isn't meant to be any sort of heavy-handed decree, but it does put up a wall where one is not welcome. Is Danica Sills, for example, not doing it right because she uses watercolors and follows a different prompt list than others? If you watch her videos, and you should because they're awesome, she is not shy about sharing her various stumbles and hurdles brought on by the project and the changes in her focus and habits it brings up. Going back to Brad Colbow, the part he was gearing up for most about Inktober was the schedule, the daily deadline, something he typically doesn't have to deal with to that degree in his line of work. Why are the "digital artists who overuse Ctrl+z" the only people for whom Inktober has meaning? 

That's the key matter to bear in mind if you're going to pursue this: what does it mean to you? 

For me, I view it in much the same way as NaNoWriMo. The next great work of modern literature is not going to be born of someone hammering out a 50,000 word manuscript in 30 days. Prove me wrong, please, but we need to be realistic about this. What's the point, then, some would ask? I say to the same two words to those people for that event as I do for this current one: WORK ETHIC. Sticking to a set schedule with structured deadlines, along with the accountability of sharing your work in public, is going to work wonders for you. 

If you need a little more guidance than that, here's a free caveat: get out of your comfort zone. If you're typically a digital artist, why not try ink and paper? If you're typically a traditional artist, maybe now's a good time to dive in to digital and see what, if anything, you've been missing? If you're only a mere margin-doodler, why not take on a big project to see how far your creativity goes? If you've never livestreamed yourself drawing via Twitch or Picarto before, why not give your fans something to tune in to? 

Here's one more pearl of wisdom if you're feeling a little anxious about it thus far. As much as I don't agree with the "Boot Camp For Spoiled Digital Artists Only" sentiment, I will give it its due credit. Being able to infinitely undo your work can have a negative effect on your productivity, especially if you're already a total perfectionist. That said, even if you're doing Inktober digitally, you can't hit Ctrl+z forever. Hell, even if you're working traditionally, ink is cheap and paper is cheaper. If you've got 5 drawings done, and you're struggling with number 6, you've got 25 more ahead of you. That's not meant to intimidate you, that should give you relief. On the off-chance it doesn't, here's another number: 3.26%. That's 1 drawing out of 31 as a percentage. That is peanuts. 

A wise man once said, "We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better."

Speaking of being better, this has been a tough week for me on a personal level. I won't bother going into details because it's pretty first-world stuff on the whole and, in light of the recent tragedy on the Las Vegas strip, there's other goings-on in the world that deserve your attention, sympathy, and action more. Still, it's been a progressively crummy week with the first signs of "bad to worse" hitting home early yesterday. As of right now, apart from my morning coffee to keep me from falling asleep at my desk, I haven't eaten since yesterday morning. Obviously, this is not a good thing to do and I need to fix that as soon as possible. I still feel it's worth noting that my old go-to treatment for depression started working again. Yesterday, all I wanted to do was go home and try not to think about how much better a place the world might be if I wasn't in it. 

I drew this instead: 

and then I decided to give myself a buffer and made this one:

When I was done, I felt better. It was a legitimate escape from what I didn't want to think about, and I didn't go back to it when I was done. Yeah, the drawings suck, but that was never the point. It may be silly to say, "Inktober kept me going." but making art makes me happy. There came a time when it wasn't enough, so I tried something else. That worked for a time, mostly still does, and now this is helping all over again. It may not be the case for you, but it can be such for others. Once upon a time, I would have hated the very idea of something like Inktober, because it would turn my ersatz therapy into a detestable tedium, and that's the last thing I would have wanted. My process was too precious to me to muck it up with deadlines or themes or other sorts of rules. I was treating creativity like a fragile blossom, and what I've learned since then is that while you can't force creativity, you cannot be afraid to push yourself a bit. You don't actually know how far your comfort zone reaches until you try to go outside of it. 

If you've been hesitant and want to try it, it's not too late. Sure, you've got a little catching up to do, but no one's going to give you grief for, say, 25 drawings in 25 days, or 15 drawings in 15 days.... 

*Edit 7th October: when this entry first went live, I was unaware the post in question was from Jake Parker; I was under the impression it was a comment on a post of his and the various screencaps didn't show a username, so I assumed it was someone else, with other similar comments from Parker adding to the drama. While this doesn't change anything I've said, it is worth noting because, at the risk of calling Jake Parker an elitist snob or even a full-fledged hypocritical liar or something along those lines, this is what his website looks like:

Conflict of Interest, much?

There's also a number of items in the art supplies list specifically for the task of undoing mistakes... in traditional media. Again, this isn't trying to hate on the man; I'm willing to chalk this up to a poor choice of words. If I were more paranoid, I'd say he was getting some pressure from one of his sponsors because their traditional art supplies weren't selling as well as they maybe would have wanted. The point is there's a difference between encouraging people to challenge themselves, get out of their comfort zones, and drawing a line in the sand. 

Special thanks to YouTuber Baylee Jae for the clarification. 

Incubus Stoner

Here you go! The official 2017 #Inktober prompt list. Pass this along or tag a friend who's doing this with you. - #inktober2017 #inktober #inking #drawing #ink #drawingchallenge #sketchbook #illustration #jakeparker #artistsoninstagram #artists #artnews #drawers #brushpen #micronpen #copic #penandink #kuretakezig #pigmamicron #micron @jakeparker

A post shared by Jake Parker (@jakeparker) on Sep 11, 2017 at 1:09pm PDT

InkTober

Holidays are funny things, many with storied histories ranging from quirky to downright dark. Many are holdovers from Pagan rituals while others mark historical events (birthdays, wars, deaths, etc.). These can be repurposed as religious holidays, their original meanings glossed over in an almost Orwellian fashion, and others get put through a Kafkaesque wringer of red tape for the sake of making 3-day weekends in February. I'm sure there's at least two holidays that were made up by greeting card companies to fill a gap in their schedule. Many controversies have been sparked over to what extent a holiday should be observed, especially in regards to school closures. Comedians have built careers on the reality of the crawling chaos that is Christmas, with Black Friday bleeding into Gray Thursday (while Small Business Saturday never quite catches on). 

As time goes on, I've found I get less and less enthusiastic for holidays, ignoring most altogether and avoiding whatever I get roped into. For example, I've plans to see my family in December, but to be long gone at least a good week before Christmas Day. I'm also having my own Thanksgiving dinner this year with my roommate due to various rifts in her family that have left it deeply splintered. Part of me is a bit nervous about this, mostly from people placing an alarming emphasis on specific days holding specific meaning. 

"But it's about spending time with loved ones! And if it's not on the day..." they cry out, to which I whisper back, "Who's says I'm not already doing that?" Seriously, I don't get the idea that somehow a gift from someone you care about is less important on one day than another. Sure, Christmas Every Day diminishes the, er, meaning or importance or significance or mojo or whatever, but it's not a comet during an eclipse, either. Still, it gives me pause. I wonder if I'm missing something, if I've just become some embittered Scrooge sitting in the corner with arms folded and punctuating the statement with a mighty, "Harumph!". 

Then I realized there was a double standard in my thinking. I was cynical towards "traditional" holidays, but "new" holidays were getting the No True Scotsman treatment by yours truly. I was saying Pi Day was dopey, Talk Like a Pirate Day was stupid (I mean, okay, it kind of is, but you'll see where I'm going with this), Palindrome dates are an excuse for semi-clever marketing (9-9-99, 11-11-11), and Christmas in July is just an excuse for kids in summer camp to make ornaments in Arts & Crafts. Now, when I see people posting their old photos for Throwback Thursday or adorable kitten videos for Caturday, I may not get as excited for it as I do New Year's, but events like NaNoWriMo come closer than Talk Like A Pirate Day ever could. Tumblr taught me that October is Black Cat Month, when cat lovers paradoxically raise awareness about violence against black cats around Halloween as well as their statistically lower adoption rates while many shelters set moratoriums on adoption because of the aforementioned violence. I think it's great to see people get excited like this over some shared interest. My point is it's as valid as any other holiday, even if you don't get the day off. 

As much as talking about black cats got me riled up, I'm simultaneously "celebrating" black cat month with another internet-inspired holiday: Inktober. Started by illustrator Jake Parker back in 2009 as a challenge to himself, the idea is simple: each day has a word or other kind of prompt attached to it, and you make an ink-based illustration for each one. Proper hashtags are applied when posted to social media to make your work searchable for other participants and onlookers, and you get to see radically different interpretations of the same given theme. There's a few other takes on it, different prompt lists or simply keeping the "one per day" part. There's no wrong way to participate, really, but I decided to stick with the original, and have been for the past week. 

I am doing things a little differently, though, if only by my own standards. I've been drawing digitally almost exclusively for around a full year, off and on for maybe another two. Despite my misgivings, I have generally not missed working traditionally, especially the scanning and photographing and editing of pieces before being uploaded and posted to my DeviantART or ArtStation or even Twitter. For this Inktober, I thought it might be fun to go back to the simple purity of ink and paper, but I didn't want to go through the hassle of scanning. So, I made a kind of compromise. The drawings I post to my Instagram (where this event really seems to come alive) are taken with my iPhone, sometimes at odd angles and many times with shadows left in, and then edited in some program like Aviary or Pixlr or Paper. The edits are generally cosmetic, mostly tilt shift focus or vignetting or color filters, and no new lines are added to the original drawing nor is any part of the drawing erased (only cropped). 

Whatever you celebrate, have fun with it.