Story Time!

a thread on why i liked the idea of inktober but not into doing inktober...

I remember back in 2014, I heard of Inktober and I was interested in the idea of drawing daily for a month...
since it challenges you to become more creative...
also it was a big flex as an artist to do such thing...

unfortunately I didn't draw traditionally so I didn't do inktober...
but i wanted to do the challenge so I called mine "Artober" since I did mine digitally...
I was able to finish it and it felt great doing it...

I remember at the time, I was told that i was ripping off the inktober thing... which was true but i didn't care, cause at the time i wasn't after the clout of a hashtag.
all i wanted was just to challenge myself...

on 2015, I fell in love with the brush pen...
and since I was involved in the art community at the time, I decided to do an inktober...

I did mine as an excuse to make content while practicing in improving my traditional art skills (since i really sucked)

after my 1st (and only) inktober, the feedback i got was that i didn't follow the prompts.

Cause i drew whatever i wanted, i remember comments such as "how is this related to "insert prompt"

thus turned me off towards the challenge, the gatekeeping was high lol...

2016, i started my daily girl challenge, cause I rather do things my own, own rules and own pace...

mostly because i like doing art challenges to improve myself rather than get likes on a hashtag...
also i didn't understand why limit yourself to a month, specifically october lol

for 2017, i wanted to try more universal art challenges, where there's no individual claiming credit for starting it...

i ended up doing the "hourly comic day " to broaden my range which is great for an artist...

2018, I noticed the abundance of art challenges and didn't like that many centered october and november.

so i made my own for september, which is a pun with my name "GioSeptember"
I basically drew what i was wearing for the whole month,
this was something i made to have fun with

i really liked GioSeptember because it can be whatever I want it to be since it centers around me...

because of experiencing other art challenges, i kinda just wanna do my own thing since i kinda proved to myself i could do it or something...

i didn't plan to do GioSeptember for 2019, but I needed to promote my game as well as make more characters for it...
so GioSeptember 2019 was making animated characters for my game, it was the most exhausting thing i ever did lol...

i kinda went off topic but the point of this thread is

Art challenges are fun.
I encourage using them to improve yourself rather than forcing yourself because everyone else does it.

you have any month in the year, any theme to go with, don't isolate yourself with just inktober.

if ever you feel the art challenge seems to limiting for you, just do your own thing... what's important is you do something the challenges you to improve in your own pace...

for this year, 2020...
my goal is just to stay consistent and disciplined..
and i know drawing daily is my solution to that which is why I'm doing the daily girl drawing again...

so yeah, my advice is doing something for your skill first before clout...