This year I decided to participate in Inktober. (More info here). Basically I had to create a drawing in ink for every single day of October.
It was both easier and more difficult than I thought.
Easier: I thought drawing in ink would be this crazy new experience that I wouldn’t be able to handle very well since all the art I do is either digital or with a pencil. But really, a lot of the same principles apply; they’re just modified a little bit. You still have to think about form, shape, contrast, value, but just in a different medium.
I also thought I would probably give up after the first couple days, but I actually stuck with it for the whole of October! It was easier to continue than I thought. The main thing is really just getting it into a habit. Once you develop that habit, it becomes so much easier.
Harder: Though many of the same ideas from drawing digitally/with pencil apply in drawing with ink, the main thing I had to learn about was permanence. Once I put a line down–that was it. No going back. No eraser. No Ctrl-Z. That really taught me a lot about planning. For example, just for that one picture above, I actually created about 4 different sketches. I tried out all the possible ideas, like little prototypes before I committed to a design in ink.
Parmita Bawankule 