Inktober went much better this year. In case you don’t know what it is, Inktober is a challenge to create one piece of ink work every day in the month of October. There are prompts for each day and people all around the world participate. It’s like NaNoWriMo –which I rock– for visual artists. I’ve dreamed of completing the challenge for several years now. Last year, I managed to create four drawings and that was the most I’d ever done before. It was very hard for me, and took a lot of time.

This year, I completed 31 pieces of artwork.

Here is the list of prompts this year. See if you can tell which pieces were inspired by the prompts and which ones were not.

Not every piece I created is technically good, but I feel good about the art project as a whole. This is the culmination of dedicated study and practice. I can’t say I have drawn every day this year, but I have spent more time every week than ever before. My time with the Silver Drawing Academy has given me at least a day of consistent practice every week, plus an extra day during the month, and the video trainings that I do.

I also participated in the Children’s Book Academy Graphic Novel Course this year, which was an intense six weeks of graphic novel work. I did the Children’s Book Academy Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers course a couple years ago and found it extremely hard to keep up with the illustration workload. This year, I discovered that I was able to keep up, and that the course pushed me to grow in my abilities.

I feel like I hit a developmental milestone in my illustration journey. And now, after completing Inktober, I feel a level of confidence I most definitely did not have this time last year. There’s so much still to learn, but now I am happy with my growth and sure of my future improvement.