Putting My Sketch Ninja Skills to Work for Inktober

I have been thinking about possibly taking on Inktober this year and putting my sketching skills to work again.

It has been a while since I have seriously committed myself to a drawing challenge, but the idea of sitting down every day and producing a sketch is appealing. There is something different about working with a pen and paper compared with the technical projects I spend so much of my time working on.

There are no compilers.

No debugging.

No build systems.

No documentation to maintain.

Just a blank page and whatever I can come up with.

That is part of the appeal.

Putting the Sketch Ninja Skills to Work

I have always enjoyed sketching, and I jokingly think of those skills as my sketch ninja abilities. They may not get used as frequently as my programming and technical skills, but they are still there.

Inktober seems like a good excuse to bring them back.

The challenge of producing something every day is particularly interesting. It would force me to stop overthinking things and actually put something on the page.

That is something I could probably benefit from.

When working on software, it is easy to spend a long time planning, restructuring, revisiting an idea, and trying to make everything perfect before considering it finished. Sketching can be much more immediate.

You make a mark.

You see what happens.

You adjust.

You keep going.

That process has its own kind of satisfaction.

The Daily Challenge

The biggest question is whether I can actually keep up with the daily aspect of Inktober.

Creating one drawing does not sound particularly difficult.

Creating one every day is another matter.

There will inevitably be days when I am busy with other projects, working on Fossil Logic, training jujitsu, working on the Tartaria realm, or simply dealing with everyday responsibilities.

That means I would have to approach the challenge realistically.

The objective would not necessarily be to create a masterpiece every single day.

The objective would be to draw.

Some sketches could be relatively simple. Others might take considerably longer. Some might turn out exactly as I imagined them, while others might end up looking completely different from the original idea.

That is part of the fun.

Sketching Without Overthinking

One of the things I like about the idea of Inktober is that it encourages a certain amount of experimentation.

A prompt gives me a starting point.

From there, I can decide what to do with it.

I could draw characters, creatures, environments, objects, monsters, machines, fantasy scenes, or whatever else comes to mind. I could even use some of the worlds and ideas I have already been developing elsewhere as inspiration.

Tartaria alone could provide plenty of material.

There are knights, castles, ancient builders, mysterious forests, cities, ruins, monsters, and all sorts of strange lore that could be turned into sketches.

I could also take inspiration from jujutsu, technology, science fiction, fantasy, or completely random ideas.

The important part would be keeping the process enjoyable.

A Different Kind of Practice

There is also something valuable about practicing drawing even when the result is imperfect.

The more I sketch, the more comfortable I become with putting ideas onto paper.

That is similar to learning anything else.

Repetition builds familiarity.

Mistakes become less intimidating.

Techniques become more natural.

And eventually, things that once required considerable thought can become almost automatic.

That makes Inktober appealing beyond simply completing a challenge.

It could be a way to sharpen my drawing skills again.

Maybe This Is the Year

I am not making any grand promises yet.

I am saying possibly.

But the more I think about it, the more appealing the idea becomes.

I already have the sketching skills. I just need to put them to work.

So perhaps this is the year I dust off the pencils, grab some paper, start working through the prompts, and see what happens.

Maybe some drawings will be great.

Maybe some will be terrible.

Maybe some will turn into ideas that I eventually develop into something larger.

Either way, I will have practiced.

And that is really the point.

Put the sketch ninja skills to work, draw something every day, learn from the results, and see where the ink takes me.

If I decide to take on Inktober, I have a feeling it could be a pretty fun experiment.