The moment the spooky season rolls around, many artists enjoy participating in an annual tradition of drawing every day of October. With drawing daily, it’s made to encourage people to draw and create. Inktober has grown increasingly popular and is slowly making a breakthrough with social media. Many artists know what Inktober is, but how did it start?
Inktober started with a single artist named Jake Parker who just started using a brush Ink pen. He wanted to practice with this new challenging tool, so he decided to draw for 30 days in October and called it Inktober.
To hold himself accountable, Jake started posting his art adventure on his blog. Each drawing Jake made helped him explore the new brush-tip ink pen while also having fun doing so in the process. With some goals for improvement in mind, he continued the month using one pen, paper and his imagination.
“On October 1, 2009, I announced on my blog that I was starting the Inktober challenge,” Jake Parker said on his website. “When you make your mark you better mean it. It’s black and white. True or false. On or off. And that’s what Inktober is all about”.
And thus, Inktober commenced. The Inktober Challenge began and slowly started to spread. People started following Parker’s journey, enjoying watching the commitment to drawing and improving. He stayed consistent over the month with a newfound enjoyment of the ink brush pens and felt like he improved with the new tool, which was the goal for the start of the year.
The following year, Parker got injured playing volleyball, when he fell and got a concussion. This caused him to miss the majority of the month, but it didn’t stop the Internet. People online joined the challenge and posted their entries on social media. This encouraged Parker to continue the following year and keep the tradition alive.
“The challenge could have ended there for me. However, in 2011 I wanted to try it for real again and really dig into it, using the challenge as a way to make a complete story,” Parker said.
Inktober rapidly grew as more people joined and artists heard of the challenge. Parker started a website to post prompts to further spark people’s creativity for the event.
“In 2017 over 3 million Inktober drawings were posted on Instagram alone,” said Parker.
With so many different prompts and versions, Inktober has thrived in the artist community.
“I heard my friends talking about a fun art challenge for the month of October. It ended up being much more than that and the community behind it is one of the best parts,” said Lila Strehlow, a student at Sage Creek.
Cathryn Burroughs, an art teacher at Sage, encourages students to participate in Inktober and makes it an event in her classroom.
“It also acts as a great warm up exercise as soon as students walk into class. Most importantly, it really empowers students when they see what they have created at the end of the month,” said Burroughs.
“Inktober offers artists the opportunity to draw better, learn new drawing skills, like cross-hatching, and have some fun with their art,” Burroughs added.
Inktober is open to any artist who wishes to challenge themselves. Next time October rolls around, consider picking up a pen and exploring the creativity Inktober has to offer.
