My Thoughts after the InkTober drawing challenge

At the end of this text, I have included all 31 drawings that I completed for the InkTober challenge. I drew those! 31 drawings of 30 X 40 cm size papers in 31 days and I’m super proud of my accomplishment.

I had to push myself to complete a drawing every day for the past month to successfully complete the InkTober drawing challenge.

When I decided to accept this challenge, my expectations were low as I had never tried drawing with ink or painting with watercolors. Despite this, I was determined to do my best and enjoy the creative process. By the end of drawing challenge, both my confidence and my technical ability had increased.

I won’t lie, it was tough, VERY TOUGH. It was not easy to complete one picture in a day and then start a new one after a few hours sleep.

Day 1 of the challenge (theme: fish) was the toughest. I started very early in the morning, was drawing whole day and finished the drawing at eleven o’clock in the evening! By that time, I was exhausted but still had to find the mental energy to post the drawing on numerous social networks.

The next few days were a little easier as I began to develop a rhythmic cycle of drawing and posting.

I have to admit there were times during the month of the challenge where I felt like giving up. Sometimes I felt I just couldn’t do it anymore. I felt inhibited by the theme. I normally draw what I choose to draw and not something that is chosen for me. It was challenging and tiring. On such days only one thing was perfect – I was sleeping like a baby and never had any problems sleeping.

The pace was relentless. Every day required new ideas and energy to do it all again. What surprised me the most was that I began to enjoy the seemingly endless daily process of creation, completion and renewal.

The first challenge was to sift through ideas inspired by the daily theme and choose one. This sounds easy but the problem was too many ideas and the difficulty in choosing one. But there was not enough time to make slow decisions. So, I used my tried and tested approach whereby I looked at the blank paper to see invisible things and then I “recreated” them.

I had several goals when I decided to take part in the challenge:

Don’t miss a day – create 31 finished drawings in 31 days, in a medium I have never worked with until today – DONE
Become super organized and share my artworks on my website and social media channels –PARTIALLY DONE. I also wanted to write an InkTober dairy on my website, but I just couldn’t find the energy and time for that.
Don’t get Covid-19 – DONE – still healthy 🙂
Stop watching and reading distracting political news and fully concentrate on my drawing – PARTIALLY DONE. InkTober coincided with the pre-election period for Georgia’s parliamentary elections. I decided that I would only check the news in the evenings. This saved my time and especially my nerves.
Remember to reassure my diva cat that she still comes first! – DONE. Perfectly done. My cat is a diva princess and all of her frequent demands for food and attention have to be met in seconds.
Become super-fast and don’t waste too much time on unnecessary things, especially cooking and eating. However, my family didn’t suffer from #Starvtober. For most of my InkTober days I made several meals a day and even managed to marinate a bottle 12 kilos of super-hot peppers. You can get a recipe here, on my food blog about Georgian cuisine.
Survive #InkTober and stay happy and sane – DONE.
Vote for Freedom in the parliamentary election – DONE.
Maintain a crazy working speed but still have time to sleep – DONE. I did manage to get sufficient sleep to remain energized.

Now it is time for new heroic projects )))

A final word. Many artists, who participate in the InkTober drawing challenge, write a pros and cons list. I did think of doing that but I honestly can’t think of any significant cons. I have benefited hugely from this challenge, especially in terms of organizing and speeding up my work process and developing my mental and creative discipline. It has created a foundation for what I will do in future. And, at the end I have 31 finished artworks!