For the past several years, something called Inktober has become an annual October tradition for both amateur and professional artists and illustrators. It’s intended to get people back to drawing with plain old pen and paper rather than relying excessively on digital methods, and to reawaken creative impulses by giving short “prompt” words to inspire subjects and compositions. Since Inktober is rather Chestertonian in nature, there aren’t many rules or guidelines to it: the idea is to just make something, and to try to do it every day for a month if possible.
I’ve never done it before, but this year decided to dive in. I didn’t use any of the prompts but instead decided to try to draw a favorite novelist every day. I missed a few days here and there, but so far I’ve kept chugging along!
Here’s a few of the authors I’ve drawn this month:
It’s been fun–I hope to do this again next year!
Dan at Ignatius
October 26, 2018 at 8:02 pm
These are all really good and I know others have said this but the Chesterton-Totoro is g-r-e-a-t. The best, though, is the last; Waugh is killer!
John Herreid
October 29, 2018 at 5:38 pm
Thanks, Dan! These were fun to do. Wish I had enough time to do more.
Gabriella Monteith
January 23, 2021 at 1:57 pm
Your character sketches are good. I like the idea of ‘inktober’. For years I have been battling with setting up a writing routine amidst children and work. I suppose with lockdown an Inktober was set up for me by default and I decided in Jan 2021 to just write something every day – be it 3 words or three chapters a day – and it seems to be working. Long live Inktober and Long live Jantober.
Gabriella Monteith