October is here, and for me and thousands of artists all over the world, that means picking up a pen to create a single ink drawing every day of the month as part of the internet-wide challenge called Inktober. Its purpose is to improve and develop good drawing habits, such as drawing consistently. However, recently it’s caused some controversy in the art community. On Twitter, someone asked Inktober’s creator, Jake Parker, if they could use digital ink for Inktober. His reply: “The spirit of Inktober is self-improvement, and there’s no better way to master your craft than to draw without a safety net. Working digitally usually means using control Z a bunch so you get your line just right, and that can enable someone to develop bad drawing habits. There’s no feeling like making a permanent line and knowing you can’t change it without consequence...No one is stopping you from doing Inktober on your iPad, just know that you’re missing out on the FULL experience of Inktober.”
The post’s poor wording caused artists to call Parker out on his disregard. “Digital art isn’t a ‘safety net’, it’s the only way I can ink at all now. There’s no feeling like having a disability exclude you from an awesome thing,” tweeted @Runesael, whose right shoulder has an impaired nerve. While I’m sure Parker’s intent wasn’t to exclude PwDs (people with disabilities), I can understand their outrage, having a disabled brother and ADHD and asthma myself (neither of which is classified as a disability, but has repeatedly called for special accomodations when it comes to certain activities). Others, including me, are downright puzzled by Parker’s tweet. First of all, digital artists could just not use control Z during Inktober. If he feels drawing digitally isn’t the full experience, why does Parker’s site say he partnered with the Autodesk SketchBook app to create a brush set especially for Inktober? Next, speaking from experience, digital art isn’t necessarily easier; it’s just a different medium. Every art medium has its own difficulties and advantages. Then, there’s the fact that the Inktober rules specifically allow a pencil under-drawing, and pencil marks can easily be erased. Even pen marks can be removed or covered as if they were erased. If your pen is not an erasable pen, you can easily cover a mistake with a white gel pen or Wite-Out once the black ink has dried. Even Parker admits on his site that he uses Wite-Out for all his inking mistakes.
What Parker does get right is that comfort zones and perfectionism are limiting. While the comments he made about the challenge are controversial, in the end, Inktober is just for fun. It truly doesn’t matter whether participants are going digital or not because everyone has different comfort zones, and Parker’s intent was to encourage stepping out of them. As long as participants are improving their art and having fun in the process, they’ve captured the full experience of Inktober.