Come October, art buffs across the globe look forward to the #Inktober challenge. Initiated by artist Jake Parker in the year 2009, Inktober is an Internet challenge that aims to motivate people to draw, sketch, create and upload art for 31 days straight, through the month of October.
While prompts are provided and released a few days before October begins on Jake’s official website, artists are free to experiment with their own ideas, themes and inspirations. And Hyderabad has joined the Inktober bandwagon with fervour!
Abhishek Dhar, an art director from the city who has been taking up the challenge for three years now, explains how instead of single creative pieces, he is sketching a linear story through each of his 31 Inktober pieces, using the prompts.
But how much do the prompts help? Or would he rather have the freedom to work around his own pieces? Abhishek says, “I do art outside Inktober as well, and there I have all freedom to create anything and everything. The best part of Inktober are the prompts. We need challenges to grow constantly. The challenge is to make something around that prompt, and Inktober serves that purpose.”
On the other hand, city-based art enthusiast and a language editor, Poulomi Mandal, thinks prompts make life easier rather than more challenging. Taking up the challenge since 2015, she says, “Of course, I would love my own creative freedom to do the artworks. But the whole concept of Inktober is to develop our style. I feel prompts take off the burden of choosing and hunting for a theme on my own, which gives me enough time to work on my technique and concept. But one of my favourite themes stays the ‘witches’ by this Instagram artist called Jacquelin De Leon.”
But how difficult is it to upload a sketch every day for 31 days straight? Tabitha says, “Very! Because there is a lot of thought that goes into one artwork. It is very difficult for me be inspired all the time. I watch movies, TV shows, go out with friends and during all of this I am passively fishing for content.”
While the original idea by Parker was to primarily use ink as medium for the sketches, over the years the mediums used by the artists have evolved. Ranging from simple ink to digital art, Inktober has become an all-encompassing art movement. Talking about supplies, Poloumi says she uses poster colours, Camlin brush pens, Brustro technical pens and her absolute favourite, the Tombow Fudenosuke hard tip brush pen. On the other hand, Tabitha and Abhishek have opted for digital artworks this year.
