#Inktober Begins NOW

Today is October 1st.  For some, it’s the start of fall.  Others begin their Halloween planning.  For other poor lost souls, it’s just another first day of another new month.

For the rest of us, it’s now #Inktober!

Jake Parker’s challenge is to do an inked drawing every day of the month and post it on social media as you go.

I’ve done it for the last two years.  (I also did #MerMay earlier this year.)  This year, I’m doing it differently. I’m going digital with it.  No more fighting with Pentel Pocket Brushes and Micron 0.1 pens. I’m doing it all on my Yiynova 20″ digital pen display.  (It’s a poor man’s Cintiq.)

I’ve been busy doing a lot of pencil drawings for the last month and a half in preparation for this, so I’ve got my raw materials already scanned in and ready to go.  While I focused mostly on my own characters last year, it looks like I’ll be doing fan art this year.

I’ll be covering #Inktober on this site all month long, posting my progress as the month grinds on.  At this point, I’m deliberating between posting weekly round-ups or going all out and posting daily with the image before and after ink, some text about the characters and their comics, and a few videos along the way. It could be fun.

I’ll be doing all the inking in Clip Studio Paint, naturally. I hope to pick up some new pointers along the way that I can share on my other website, LearnCSP.com.

I’ll be posting every drawing I do to Instagram on a daily basis, as well as Twitter.  Follow me on one of those two links to see if I get any better.  I sure hope so.

Finally, I’d love to see something start up in November next to get everyone to color what they inked in October.  Or I might just color as I go for #Inktober.  I don’t like to nail down any game plan ahead of time, because this is supposed to be fun.  I want to be flexible to accommodate the fun.

So, welcome to #Inktober. Let the fun begin!