Looking Back at October

And the N'Inktober Challenge

I always look forward to October, and kind of dread it, too. It’s not just that my birthday is in this month, although as I get older that’s a bit more piercing with every passing year. No, it is the sheer ‘what have I done to myself?’ of the art challenge.

I don’t run with the herd on the big community challenge, and haven’t since the original creator hired lawyers who cracked down on anyone using the name. He may have reined them in, I neither know nor care. I discovered that it was too much fun to have my fans generate the prompts for me. The fans, with evil giggles and much rubbing together of their hands, come up with words that… well, there’s a reason this month is a challenge. I would be fine with the simple one-word prompts. But word pairs? And words like, well, triskadecaphobic? Heh. Well.

Another year, this makes six, in the bag. I drew every day for the full month. Some days are simpler compositions than others, depending on life and time and mental horsepower on any given day. I’ve compiled them all into a video, for brevity’s sake in this post. If you follow me on social media (medias? Medium? :P) you may have already seen them, but it was kind of cool to put them all back to back like this.

Last month I released a book containing the highlights from all the first five years, and you can buy Days of No Ink in paperback and hardcover, reasonably priced for art books. I didn’t put that book out to make money, but as an exercise in sharing what doing a challenge like this can do for you. Not just in art, but in any skill you care to name. Practice, play, and persist: you will improve.

I was vastly tickled to learn that this year a couple of people here on Substack were following along on the prompts, as well. Holly Sampson did her take with fun cartoons, which are so sweet. A.C. Young took it in the text direction, using the prompts to drive a wildly imaginative piece of serial fiction. You should really check out their work, too!

Thank you all! It’s been quite a month. I will be catching my breath in November, writing a whole lot, and taking it easy on the art front while I focus on getting Tanager’s Fleet finished soon for my editors. My brave editing team, who just did the thunder run through their work on Have a Dead Night with me. They are amazing ladies: Kathleen Sanderson, Liota Wakal, and Deb Hisle.