Inktober 2020

Another year, another Inktober, or what I call a mixed bag of excitement, stress, lots of regret, and tons of fun. Every year I get excited about Inktober, and within a week I start to regret it; I even tell my friends to not let me do Inktober the next year. I stuck to the decision of not doing Inktober last year, but I got excited again this time around. Here’s what’s different this time:

I thought I had no chance of doing Inktober, after a devastating diagnosis in August, so I wasn’t even thinking about it. Anyway, my right hand was weak and had less control, my handwriting had become pretty bad and I was not in a state to draw - mentally or physically. In September, I picked up my colour pencils which I haven’t used in years, and started scribbling random shapes in an old notebook. My mind had become very blank during those few weeks, an extremely rare occurrence for a classic over-thinker like me, so I just scribbled whatever I felt like - without thinking. And it was so much fun.

That’s when I decided to do Inktober, but with a different set of prompts, simple and direct ones where I wouldn’t have to think too much. I found these food related prompts at TheyDrawAndCook and also decided to use those. I also decided to use colour, lots of colour, instead of black and white illustrations like previous years. And of course, the same rules - don’t put too much pressure on yourself (followed only partially), do only as much as you can, no pressure to do all the prompts, you can quit anytime etc etc.

I started with pencil colour drawings, but after about a week or so, it started feeling tedious and not a lot of fun. So I switched to watercolours and it turned out to be more and more fun with each illustration.

Here are some of my favourite ones:

These are some of the colour pencil illustrations that turned out fine.

And here are some of the drawings that didn’t turn out that well; but it’s a learning process of trial and error, isn’t it?