October has been an exciting month for pretty much forever, but it is a special month for artists!
It started with Inktober, a daily art challenge where you work from a prompt list and do an ink illustration every day in October. This grew into such an exciting way to make art interactive and exciting on social media. You had something to post every day and it was possible for others to follow along at home with their own art. This grew into other artists creating their own prompt lists and eventually other monthly challenges.
Something that has to be said for monthly challenges is that they are a challenge! It is deceivingly hard to get through the whole month. I usually find it do-able until halfway through the second week before I get behind, or busy and lose track, and start forgetting to work on something every day.
I personally have always struggled with working from a prompt list. I tend to find them uninspiring. Because they are supposed to be a jumping-off point to inspire your image for the day, it was creating a bit of a problem for working on monthly challenges. I have in the past just tried to draw whatever comes to mind, but then had the issue of everything looking about the same.
For 2020 I wanted to revisit an October art challenge and came up with something a little different
I saw a few variations on the witchtober idea: designing anew witch every day, based on a prompt word. I love the theme of witches! Not only is it pretty on topic for October, but it also fits my personal interests and works well into my own stories and world setting or my stories (so I can use any character I come up with in my works).
I had found two lists I really liked so I wanted to work from them both, ultimately using two prompt words every day to help make more interesting designs. I also am not a very big fan of working ‘in order’, and wanted to be able to randomly generate a prompt, so I couldn’t work ahead. Mostly so I wouldn’t get my hopes up (or down) about what I could see for the next day. I enlisted my boyfriend’s help to do the math for how to roll dice of the lists I had.
I also wanted to do sketches and focus on the idea and not the execution of the prompt, with the idea being that I would come back to my favorite ideas and use those to make full illustrations. I also had a sketchbook that was almost filled up that I wanted to wrap up. but had a hard time wanting to work in because I’m not a fan of the paper.
My plans for Witchtober 2020
- Roll from 2 prompt lists to get an idea
- Fill a spread with rough sketches and ideas
- Record a flip through on Sunday for youtube
- Come back at the end of the month to find one prompt for each week that I can turn into an illustration
- Turn those illustrations into prints?? Stickers??
If you are interested in seeing my flip through videos where I talk about what my thought process was you can find it on my YouTube! I will be posting the images at the end of the week on my Instagram as well!