This year, on top of my side project (airbrush tattoos & face painting) and making my niece & nephew’s Halloween costumes, I made the commitment to participate in INKTOBER!!
I heard about this last year through some friends, I saw they were posting numbered ink illustrations almost everyday, I thought “WOW! they have been doing a lot of ink in a short amount of time, whats motivating them? and what is up with the numbers?!” so I asked them and they told me about Inktober.
Inktober was started from an illustrator named Jake Parker, who’s work is amazing! Mr. Jake Parker wanted to work on his inking skills and build good drawing habits, thus creating a challenge for himself to stay motivated while practicing. What started out as a personal challenge is now practiced by many illustrators and artists around the world.
The challenge is to create 31 ink based illustrations, sketches or drawings in 31 days; now one can draw 1 drawing each day or as many as you like in a day as long as the end result is 31 inked pieces (pencil underdrawings are okay too) and having a fun time challenging yourself while practicing your inking skills.
Use any style of ink: Felt, Pen or Brush & Ink, Ballpoint, Ink Wash; you can also take go further by combining your ink illustrations with other mediums: Pencil Crayon, Water Colours, Paint, Digital and more!
The point it to challenge yourself and practice, but having fun doing it!
Find out more about Inktober at the creators site here: INKTOBER
Last year it was a bit too late for me to participate, so I made sure I made a note to give this challenge a try for the coming year!
I have completed the challenge and can honestly say I loved it! It has challenged me to make time to sit down and draw; something I was planning on trying to do myself, but to no avail started even though I purchased a small moleskin sketchbook in attempts to create an initiative to start, but it was not really until this challenge have I really made the time to do so; i also made a good dent in the number of pages filled in this book.
Inktober inspired me to practice creative thinking and inking skills, challenging to adopt the discipline of making time to sketch at least 1 thing (big or small) each day to improve my skills.
It is a fun challenge your can share with your friends and family or other creatives on any social platform your can post images to; search and tag your work #inktober to see who else is participating and what they were inspired to create.
You can follow me on Instagram @noelle_fontaine or any of my other social media platforms to see what other illustrations or designs come up next.
Let me know your thoughts, favourites and critiques.
Check out my 2015-2019 Inktober collection!
Thank you for reading and have fun inking! 🙂
Noelle Fontaine Design & Illustration 