Near the end of September I was asked, “Are you doing InkTober?” I gave a simple answer of “No, I don’t really like challenges.” Actually, I love InkTober because I get to see so many ink sketches done by many people who don’t normally work in ink and/or who use InkTober to do quicker, simpler sketches than they normally do.
A couple days into InkTober I was asked, “Why aren’t you doing InkTober?” I answered that “I draw in ink all the time. I don’t need a challenge to get me to do it.” The response that came back was a surprise. It implied that there was something wrong with me and that I would draw more regularly and improve my ink skills if I did InkTober and that I should be participating.
After I came down off the ceiling over someone telling me what I should or should not do with my chosen hobby, I got to thinking and those thoughts ran along these lines. How can this person, who follows my blog, not know that 1) I draw almost EVERYTHING in ink and 2) that I draw constantly without needing a challenge to get me to draw daily?
Out of curiosity, and possibly with just a hint of grumbling over this out of the blue indictment, I looked at what I’ve posted on my blog so far this year. Here’s the arithmetic:
posts during first 9 months of this year: 289
number of months: 9
ink drawings done and posted per month: 31
I’ve done and posted InkTober numbers of sketches EVERY month this year. I’m not bragging here. It’s just what I do. Others do more…much more. I don’t think a lot of people realize just how much sketching/art is done by many artists. I thought maybe these numbers would give you some indication.
I realized, however, that this isn’t the whole picture. Those 31 sketches per month are only the ones I decided to scan and post. I do dozens of smaller, experimental, dare I say trivial sketches every month. Many are done on location but often they’re done while I watch TV. While I don’t waste time scanning/posting them, they are a very important part of my learning process.
So, I went through the books that hold these sketches and scanned a few of them. Decisions of which sketches to scan were made to give some indication of the variation in quality of those sketches and variation in subject matter.
So, when I tell you I don’t do InkTober, realize that it’s not that I don’t like InkTober. It’s that I’m doing it all the time. I just don’t acknowledge that October is any different from any other month. Hope you like at least a couple of these tiny sketches and, if you’re doing InkTober, that you have a lot of fun doing it. I’ll enjoy looking at your sketches.