Welcome to Inktober

There are a lot of great things about October. The leaves begin to change, Halloween is right around the corner, and pumpkin mania is at its highest peak (I regret nothing). I recently learned about another great reason to celebrate the month of October - Inktober!

Inktober is a month long celebration of ink drawings. This can include sketches, comics, webcomics, etc. People post them on [insert social media platform here] with the hashtag #inktober or #inktober2017.

#inktober #prompt8 #crooked

I love this idea. 

See I'm a big comic book, manga, and graphic novel reader. My first comic books were Asterix comics from the 1960s that belonged to my dad. And no, these books aren't just for kids. There are a lot of amazing stories to be read that include war, horror, romance, and mystery (to name a few genres). I am always surprised when someone writes off these stories as just being for kids (same thing can be said for animation).

There are a lot of great webcomics that I can recommend. Since it's October, the season of all things scary, check out Helsirvente. It's perfect for this time of year since it's all about ghost hunting. I even draw my own webcomic (not that I'm trying to plug it or anything - it updates on Thursdays at 6:00pm) and would love to one day have a published graphic novel.

That isn't to say that comics, manga, and graphic novels are the only things to celebrate during Inktober. There's a lot of art that is created using nothing but pen and paper. Some of it is super realistic that it's almost like looking at a photograph. Others are beautifully abstract and really stimulate the imagination. 

And don't forget about animation. A fair number of early animation shorts (when film was still in it's infancy) was created by cartoonists hand drawing each cel of animation. Out of the Inkwell was a series of shorts in the 1920s that shows a cartoon character coming to life from pen ink. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck also references the ink animation technique in the classic Duck Amuck.

So what do you need to participate in Inktober if you haven't started already?

Nothing fancy. A piece of paper and a pen are all that you really need to get started. Maybe draw a sketch everyday day, or start a comic book/webcomic, or create your next/first tattoo.

Inktober also has a list of prompts for each day of the month. You can click here to learn more!

And don't get discouraged if you're not happy with the first drawings that you do. When I compare the latest pages of my webcomic to the very first that I posted (or even my high school sketchbook to the one I'm currently working in), I can visibly see how much I've improved. What matters is having fun and enjoying the art that's being created!

Happy Inktober everyone. I hope to see more sketches as the month goes on.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. And if you guys have any webcomic/manga/graphic novel suggestions, please send them my way!