What is Inktober?

- Auxane B.

Have you ever seen some drawings on social media with the hashtags #inktober or #inktober2021 and wondered what it was?

Jake Parker invented Inktober in 2009 with the goal of using it as a means to improve his drawing skills. Through the use of prompts, participants are required to produce one drawing per day, to get into a routine of artistic expression. Today, the popularity of this challenge has grown, and takes place every year from the 1st to the 31st of October, with artists from all around the world taking a moment of their day to create a drawing based on the assigned prompt.

Other than the list posted on the official Inktober website (inktober.com), many other prompts have been invented, based on different themes, book characters, movies, etc...

Inktober takes place during the whole month of October, but for people who want to take the challenge further, Inktober 52 has been invented. This challenge consists in doing one drawing per week throughout the whole year. Of course, even if Inktober is seen as a challenge with artists encouraged to post their art on social media with the hashtag #inktober, you are not pressured at all to post it or do it every single day of the month, or even to use ink as the media. Inktober is just an excuse to challenge yourself to create a healthy drawing habit and improve your art skills, all to feel more confident about your art! Although Inktober is over, you can still check out the website inktober.com and look at the prompts from past years if you ever want to start a drawing based on a prompt. So get your pens, ink, or whatever material you want and start creating!

Below is an example that I made from this year’s prompts. Drawing 1 used the prompt ‘spirit’, drawing 2 ‘fan’, and 3 ‘watch’. Recurring themes of mine were the three characters that I invented, a pigeon, a calamar and a chameleon.