Hi everyone , it’s October and I am so excited to start my favourite challenge of the year ! I started joining the challenge inktober from 2017, I was drawing random ideas that year and the year after. Back in 2019 I made a list and so many people showed interest and joined me and that motivated me to be more consistent in my everyday drawings. It’s always challenging for me to limit the materials I use during the year to only ink and I always feel a little bit of pressure to finish a sketch in a short amount of time but it's always encouraging after the month of October to see my improvements. This year’s inktober is all about learning for me and the must important change that I want to make this year is focusing on my storytelling. I am beginning to realize that what I really want to do with my art is to tell stories through my images. For this year I made a list of words that make me want to create stories and that inspire me to draw. I hope you like them and join me in this challenge. I will share my favorite ones of your contributions everyday on my Instagram and choose 3 winners 🎁 🎉 At the end of the month I will send each winner a goodie bag of original sketches, sketchbooks, pins and prints, you just make sure to use the hashtag #doodlitober and you can also tag me on your posts.

That’s it, it’s time to go out of the comfort zone, trying to find our way of making the marks with this beautiful, dangerous medium and do the mental game of focusing and studying and achieving the readable shapes with love and thoughtfulness.

Tips that I try to follow, 1- Before starting the sketch just ask myself: What am I trying to do here? write down what I think is important to be in the image. 2- I haven’t done this yet but I am going to try to make some thumbnail sketches ready , just to know what I am going to do in each day.

Note: this mark * is for what you can draw and get inspired by if you get other ideas from the main word go for it.

If like me you want to have some extra time on each piece, you can always pick your favourite words from the list and spend a day or two on each. The important thing is that we all get doodling.

love BlueBirdy

Ps: I asked my patrons to come up with ideas for the list of themes, and I got a message from Luiza, she lost her mother through COVID-19, before she passed away they wanted to do an inking course, they bought all the materials but they didn’t get the chance to use them. Her mother loved Shaimisen and planned to draw it in this October. so it’s very special to me to draw what she wanted.