Hmm… I'm surprised I've never posted about this before. For a couple years, I've participated in Inktober. Inktober is like NaNoWriMo but you draw random pictures instead of writing a book. It's really it's just a way to challenge yourself to draw
something every day for a month. There's a published prompt for each day, and then, well, you try to draw something in ink that fits the prompt.
The official rules say:
Quote:
1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).
2) Post it*
3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2022
4) Repeat
Note: you can do it daily, or go the half-marathon route and post every other day, or just do the 5K and post once a week. What ever you decide, just be consistent with it. Inktober is about growing and improving and forming positive habits, so the more you’re consistent the better.
That's it! Now go make something beautiful.
*Post it on any social media account you want or just post it on your refrigerator. The point is to share your art with someone. 
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Official prompt lists are
here, but this is the type of activity that has inspired alternative prompts among specific niche communities too.
Drawing is one of the "simple" skills that I've wished for decades that I could do better, but I rarely put in the time to actually practice. At a previous job, I had a wall-mounted whiteboard near my desk, and I would try to write or draw
something random on it almost every day. That was seven years ago, though, and my doodling opportunities ran dry everywhere since. So, now I push myself to stick with each Inktober so that I have a time-constrained extrinsic motivator.
Anyone else want to join in and draw stuff for the next 30 days?
Here's my drawing for 2022 Day 1's prompt:
gargoyle.
I take a
really long time for most of my drawing — often like a solid hour — to think about and pencil and ink and erase. Then I scan and spend even more time digitally coloring and shading in Photoshop. Despite all the time and post-processing, I'm still my own worst critic, and I can't help but cringe and agonize over my obvious mistakes and awkward proportions. I love it and I hate it.
But hopefully I see
some kind of improvement at the end of each month.
Here are a few of my favorites from previous years. Yes, I frequently look up reference images, but I try never to copy
exactly what I see. Sailor "Majora" Moon and the Halloweeny "leekspin" girl here are by far my worst cases of
direct plagiarism.
