Last October I managed to achieve something I’d been wanting to do for quite some time- a new picture uploaded (to instagram) every single day for a whole month.
I was a little scared to commit initially and threw some already completed artwork at it for a while before realising that I was going to have to pick up the pace and draw lots of new stuff.
Then I started doing-up partially completed sketches to keep the numbers up.
I also re-drew some artwork from my childhood, which was a huge boost of inspiration for me. It’s interesting to look back at that work and see the design choices that dominated. Lots of belts- final fantasy perhaps? Lots of Dragon ball Z-style suits with fabric sashes around the waist.
Old work from when I was 12 My more recent effort
Eventually I ran out of candidates for pictures to finish and was forced to draw completely new stuff.
The result of all this hard work was …to lose a lot of followers on Instagram.
Looking back at the work its clear that the quality suffered towards the end. I was under a fair bit of time pressure and it shows. There was probably also a lack of consistency- something I’ve always suffered from perhaps, but I hate seeing artists make the same piece over and over. I like to tackle new stuff!
Not that I’m overly concerned with instagram followers. Social media is well documented to be a totally bonkers minefield. Early in 2021 I’d seen my follower count shoot up from about 100 to nearly 600- all while I stood back in bemused interest and did absolutely nothing. I hadn’t uploaded anything in months, and yet up and up it went.
So when the count stopped at 597 I couldn’t help but think that a little burst of uploads might push over that arbitrary line, like that mattered, and having a go at inktober might be the perfect time to do so. Well, that shows what I know, eh?
While it may have been a disaster from a self-promotion point of view, from a personal perspective I feel very glad to have done it. There’s a lot of value in consistently doing something every day. I also felt like I was really learning for a change. It’s hard not to refine when you’re tackling the same sort of thing over and over in such a short space of time.
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