For the first time in 5 years I decided to participate in Inktober again. Having successfully done this before I knew how much work and energy it would take – I didn’t have the capacity to take on this challenge in previous years. Thankfully, this year I felt up to the task and even believed it would be a good way to explore some collage ideas and media in a low-stakes format.
To begin the 31 day challenge I immediately discarded any notion of doing it every day – I gave myself permission to work online on weekdays (and not during a pre-planned vacation either). This brought my daily total to 20 days. Much more manageable.
In addition, I pre-seeded 20 pages with collage media to begin my inky drawings. (To see what the pages looked like you can refer to my Instagram feed). By gluing in various bits and pieces of collage material and imagery I was more encouraged to get started each day – beginning from a blank page is sometimes too overwhelming.
Quickly my mixed media and ink works began to clearly take on the subject of birds – a common thing for me to return to – and so I ran with this and allowed myself to explore this theme more intentionally as the month progressed.
Soon I was more participating in Birdtober than an Inktober or even Mixedtober… (seriously, there are a LOT of different “tober” challenges now). Regardless of what the monthly challenge was – I took it upon myself to create 20 works using mixed media and ink and the results were shared on my Instagram during the month of October.
In the end, I created at least 10 works that I really like and I found merit in each days creation as I discovered (and rediscovered) various techniques and types of imagery that are meaningful to me. I definitely want to keep working in this manner and want to explore this type of collage and mixed media with other themes.
Cry The Bird 