Inktober! A.K.A Paintober For Us Oil Painters

Oh, wow! This is my first time finishing the Inktober challenge. I actually painted or inked every single day through the month of October. All 31 days, including Halloween! Boo-yah, with an emphasis on “boo”.

In years past, I started the challenge a couple times and never got past a week. I am not a consistent person. I don’t even wear the same socks on both of my feet. I’ve skipped years because of those past failures.

Last year, I watched my daughter nearly kill herself to draw for 30 days in a row. She inspired me to do this. She also reminded me how important it is to get her driving lessons. We’ll need to hire a private teacher because she is scary.

Despite the mental hurdles, I was determined to do it all the way, and I did!

Their Challenge, My Rules

There were days I thought this is the day I’m going to quit. But then I’d beat a few hours of painting out of myself, despite my husband’s pleas to feed him. He’s a grown man, he should be able to feed himself!

A few modifications helped me work the challenge every single day: I allowed myself to take it easy on the weekends and a few extremely difficult days. I switched it up from painting to timed, one to ten-minute figure drawings (easily accomplish while watching TV with the fam). There was only one day that I was so exhausted all I could muster was one one-minute figure sketch. That sixty seconds is still more than the total time that I’ve seen my husband spend reading books in the last year, so I counted it.

Finding a Theme

I didn’t realize it until just now, but figuring out a theme was a powerful tool to keep me going. I didn’t start out with a theme – I was randomly painting things here and there, but then I decided to tackle a subject I was avoiding: over the summer I had done several underwater photoshoots that provided a plethora of images to paint. The underwater images were eerie and perfect for a Halloween challenge. Maybe I was afraid to try or maybe I was procrastinating, but once I got going, they weren’t as difficult as I thought they’d be.

Dragging Across the Finishing Line

It was a herculean feat to make it the last few days. I wanted to quit, but having successfully made it to where I could see the finishing line, it was ridiculous to throw away all the rest of the month’s effort. I may have begun to cut corners and paint more sloppily. . . I mean loosely, loosely!

My Favorites

I selected a few of my favorites (and burned the rest). Can you tell which ones I painted at the beginning of the month versus the end?