INKTOBER 2018

Inktober is a monthlong drawing challenge initiated by artist Jake Parker that has now spread to millions of posts on various social media platforms. The participant tries to execute and post one image drawn in ink per day for the entire month. 

I have participated for the last three years, as it is an opportunity to make myself draw at a slightly uncomfortable pace, and denies me to the time to be too critical of the output.  Sometimes this can be a good thing.

While Mr. Parker offers 31 days of "prompts"- single words to inspire drawings, I try to select a theme of my own to generate a month's worth of drawings.

This year, I was particularly focused on the topic of portrait heads, and decided to try a series of heads with various distortions that addressed the biology and perception of the human face.  

I had recently done many many hours of research while preparing a proposal for the National Portrait Gallery and while putting together the curriculum for a class on Portrait Sculpture at The New York Academy of Art.  I found myself full of an excess of human head related tidbits, and besides droning on to my students about them, Inktober seemed like an opportunity to put them to work....and drone to another audience.

And of course, portraiture and heads are topics that I am generally fixated on anyway.

While I did exploit my kids for inktober 2017 last year, I decided that decapitation and defacement were best inflicted on my own image this time around.

As always, my apologies to the napkin specific viewers.  Inktober is always an insult to the "Daily Napkins" premise.  People complain, and followers leave in droves from Instagram in particular.  

But if you are still here looking at this page, you can click on the images below to see them enlarged, or click on the titles to read the original posts and my not so original thoughts about what the drawings have to do with faces, heads, and portraiture.

My apologies for the mostly crummy photos of the drawings.  I usually ended up taking a snapshot late at night under less than ideal lighting circumstances. The originals are all 9"x12" ink with watercolor.  

For previous inktobers, click below:

2017

2016

#1: The Artist As She Imagined Herself Looking

#2: Maybe I Just Like It This Way

#3: At Least I Have A Boyfriend

#4: Solutions To Problems I Didn't Know That I Had

#5: My Own Sidekick

#6: It Has Become Difficult To Sleep Through The Night

#7: Problems with Depth Perception

#8: The Cure For Imposter Syndrome

#9: We All Knows What This Feels Like

#10: I Might Have Brought This On Myself

#11: It May Not Be An Effective Deterrent

#12: Is That An Angry Mob Coming Our Way?

#13: Is It What's Inside That Counts?

#14: Insulting To Dogs

#15: Regarding The Interior Critic

#16: Even More Difficult And Uncomfortable Than It Looks

#17: Not My Most Authentic Self

#18: Definitely Not As Cute As The Monkey On My Back

#19: I May Have Underestimated My Uncoolness

#20: Were We Ever Really Friends?

#21: Does Somebody Need A Hug?

#22: I Feel Moderately Ambivalent About My Neck

#23: Gorgon Finger Puppets

#24: Not Entirely Empty Inside

#25: It Should Get Easier With Practice

#26: I'm Sorry, Was I Still Talking?

#27: It All Looks The Same To Me

#28: What Can I Say? I am Not Full Of Surprises

#29: That Thing Inside My Skull

#30: Persistent Vegetative State

#31: Finished Under Duress

#32: Once More With Feeling