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Inktober 2025 Post-Month Journal
5 months ago
General
This journal post is about my experience with Inktober last month. If you just follow me for my commissions, feel free to skip this. Also, it assumes you've read through the posts I did at the start of Inktober and at the mid-point. It was written over the course of a week so
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Let me start off by saying that I am so ready to get back to using colors and other brushes. ;-; There were multiple times that I wanted to add some color to a piece or experiment with a different brush, but decided against it because I wanted to adhere to my self-imposed rules. While I still believe that was the best choice, I'm ready to go back to normal. I'll likely add color to a few of the pieces I enjoyed the most this month and upload them to scraps or something.
(Likewise, I’ll probably be doing a few studies of artists I enjoyed and body parts I struggled with since I also didn’t do any studies this month as much as I was tempted by them.)
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Most of what I wrote in the mid-point post is still true. In fact, it covers most of what I learned. But paired with the previous note about being so ready to move on to other things, I think it’s a safe bet to say that I gained the most value from those first two weeks. I’d like to keep that in mind in the future. It might be a good idea to plan my studies around 2 weeks at a time of any kind of intensive work.
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I think an aspect that helped push me to push myself was that I was actively sharing the pieces in multiple places. I think last year I only shared things in a private Discord server (and even then, only a few of the nicer pieces). This year I was posting each piece to FurAffinity, BlueSky, and at least 5 Discord servers. Knowing that I’d definitely have others see my work was part of what influenced me to not just do studies and to actively try new and interesting things. The things I was making weren’t just things I was okay with sharing but usually things I wanted to share.
There were periods where I struggled a bit more with ideas for each day. The 25th through 28th was the longest stretch. Despite not doing my best work on any of those days, I think there are still aspects I like such as the shine of the hooves on 28 and the attempt at a light-on-dark composition for 27.
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I think it's pretty clear that I'm interested in doing Inktober again next year. I probably won't do the same format as this year, but it’d be fun to do either something focused on painting or something focused on a multi-page comic. I'll wait until September before I decide what rules will be best for me.
---
I'd also like to publicly reveal something important to me that I've been working on since the end of last year.
After last Inktober, I realized that it was important to me to continue with regular art practice. In 2023 and 2024, I had a pattern of doing a really intense study for a week or two at a time, and then burning out and sometimes not doing any art for a month or two. Inktober was a nice fix because everything was small. I even said as much in my post last year:
I need to keep my goals manageable for now. If I keep picking things that are too large, I'll burn out…
So on November 1st of 2024, I made a new goal for myself: creating and uploading something every day. The results are visible at https://no-restart-only-proceed.tumblr.com/archive. (Ignore that the counter is only in the 70s – there’s a reason I’ll get to in a sec.)
I didn’t announce this at the start because I wanted to get my footing and feel free to fail without embarrassment if it didn’t work out. Plus there’s a sort of magic motivation that I get from doing something in secret that is immediately lost if I tell anyone. The first person I told didn’t know until around December, and then only a few people knew about it until I was over half a year in and would occassionally bring it up in conversation when it was relevant to talking about my art’s improvement.
I’ve uploaded something to that blog nearly every day. There were a few times early on when I would miss a day, and a time more recently where I stopped for a week because I was so sick I had to go to urgent care (hence why the daily count is so low). You can see lots of things there: my Inktober pieces, sketches I did for commissions, studies, doodles, gifts for friends, experiements, humans, furries, digital, traditional, etc. Every day a step to getting better at art. (Well, except maybe June 28th but one cheat day out of over 300 isn’t that bad!) My only requirement for myself is to do something and upload it before I go to bed for the night.
My plan is to continue the blog into the future. 90% of what’s there is a bunch of nothingburgers that I don’t think need to be uploaded to FA. Their value comes in aggregate. If you want to follow it, go for it. But I don’t think you’ll be missing much from me if you don’t. :p
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Thank you for reading this. And once again, if you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
---
Let me start off by saying that I am so ready to get back to using colors and other brushes. ;-; There were multiple times that I wanted to add some color to a piece or experiment with a different brush, but decided against it because I wanted to adhere to my self-imposed rules. While I still believe that was the best choice, I'm ready to go back to normal. I'll likely add color to a few of the pieces I enjoyed the most this month and upload them to scraps or something.
(Likewise, I’ll probably be doing a few studies of artists I enjoyed and body parts I struggled with since I also didn’t do any studies this month as much as I was tempted by them.)
---
Most of what I wrote in the mid-point post is still true. In fact, it covers most of what I learned. But paired with the previous note about being so ready to move on to other things, I think it’s a safe bet to say that I gained the most value from those first two weeks. I’d like to keep that in mind in the future. It might be a good idea to plan my studies around 2 weeks at a time of any kind of intensive work.
---
I think an aspect that helped push me to push myself was that I was actively sharing the pieces in multiple places. I think last year I only shared things in a private Discord server (and even then, only a few of the nicer pieces). This year I was posting each piece to FurAffinity, BlueSky, and at least 5 Discord servers. Knowing that I’d definitely have others see my work was part of what influenced me to not just do studies and to actively try new and interesting things. The things I was making weren’t just things I was okay with sharing but usually things I wanted to share.
There were periods where I struggled a bit more with ideas for each day. The 25th through 28th was the longest stretch. Despite not doing my best work on any of those days, I think there are still aspects I like such as the shine of the hooves on 28 and the attempt at a light-on-dark composition for 27.
---
I think it's pretty clear that I'm interested in doing Inktober again next year. I probably won't do the same format as this year, but it’d be fun to do either something focused on painting or something focused on a multi-page comic. I'll wait until September before I decide what rules will be best for me.
---
I'd also like to publicly reveal something important to me that I've been working on since the end of last year.
After last Inktober, I realized that it was important to me to continue with regular art practice. In 2023 and 2024, I had a pattern of doing a really intense study for a week or two at a time, and then burning out and sometimes not doing any art for a month or two. Inktober was a nice fix because everything was small. I even said as much in my post last year:
I need to keep my goals manageable for now. If I keep picking things that are too large, I'll burn out…
So on November 1st of 2024, I made a new goal for myself: creating and uploading something every day. The results are visible at https://no-restart-only-proceed.tumblr.com/archive. (Ignore that the counter is only in the 70s – there’s a reason I’ll get to in a sec.)
I didn’t announce this at the start because I wanted to get my footing and feel free to fail without embarrassment if it didn’t work out. Plus there’s a sort of magic motivation that I get from doing something in secret that is immediately lost if I tell anyone. The first person I told didn’t know until around December, and then only a few people knew about it until I was over half a year in and would occassionally bring it up in conversation when it was relevant to talking about my art’s improvement.
I’ve uploaded something to that blog nearly every day. There were a few times early on when I would miss a day, and a time more recently where I stopped for a week because I was so sick I had to go to urgent care (hence why the daily count is so low). You can see lots of things there: my Inktober pieces, sketches I did for commissions, studies, doodles, gifts for friends, experiements, humans, furries, digital, traditional, etc. Every day a step to getting better at art. (Well, except maybe June 28th but one cheat day out of over 300 isn’t that bad!) My only requirement for myself is to do something and upload it before I go to bed for the night.
My plan is to continue the blog into the future. 90% of what’s there is a bunch of nothingburgers that I don’t think need to be uploaded to FA. Their value comes in aggregate. If you want to follow it, go for it. But I don’t think you’ll be missing much from me if you don’t. :p
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Thank you for reading this. And once again, if you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.
