🖤🖊️ Inktober Survival Guide
(October 2017)
Ah, Inktober. That month when artists around the world collectively remind themselves why they should have taken up calligraphy instead.
I’ve been participating for a few years now, and it still feels like a mixture of ritual, challenge, and mild masochism. This year, I decided to tie each prompt to something I’m passionate about — games, movies, comics, and, of course, JoJo. There’s something satisfying about combining a structured challenge with subjects that actually make you want to draw.
A few things I’ve learned over the years about surviving Inktober:
- Keep it simple. Not every drawing needs to be polished. Sometimes a few lines capture more energy than hours of detail.
- Prompts are suggestions, not rules. “Poison” became an excuse to draw Fugo in a dramatic pose, because why not?
- Don’t beat yourself up over missing a day. Life gets in the way. That’s why the sketchbook exists — it’s a living, breathing thing, not a graded assignment.
I’ll be posting weekly dumps of sketches here. Expect some misses, a few experimental inks, and plenty of moments where the pen goes somewhere my brain didn’t intend. But that’s part of the fun — the joy of seeing mistakes transform into interesting shapes, gestures, and even inspiration for future projects.
Inktober isn’t about perfection; it’s about persistence, play, and remembering why we draw in the first place. For me, it’s a monthly reminder that even after decades of sketching, there’s always room to explore, push, and occasionally smash the pen across the page just to see what happens.
— 🖊️ The Doodlecape Keeper
