Doing all 31 prompts of the Inktober drawing challenge in one day sounds mad, and it is.
It’s also satisfying and doable.
By applying these basic tips, learn how to get your Inktober done in record time.
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7 Tips for Doing Inktober with Speed
These 7 tips will help no matter your goal.
Anyone who has succeeded in completing the 31-day Inktober Pen and Ink Challenge knows that it takes planning.
Some artists choose to participate every other day or once a week. However, most of us aim to draw every single prompt.
Check out my complete guide to Inktober to get started on the official challenge. For the ultimate speed version, read on.
I’ve taken different approaches to completing this challenge in the past, and each year these seven tips helped me finish strong.
1. Research the Prompts
Have a look at the prompts.
The list is usually released on September 1st. Or get yours sooner by subscribing to the Inktober newsletter.
Read the prompts out loud and jot down the first image that comes to mind. As you go down the list, you’ll start to see several prompts with synonymous meanings.
For example, from the 2024 list, a pair of ‘Binoculars’ could also work as a concept for ‘Discover’ or ‘Navigator’.
‘Journal’, ‘Guidebook’ and ‘Passport’ have similar shape designs. They all look like books.
Let’s say you’re winging it prompt to prompt. You’re creating each prompt as you get to it.
And you drew a yurt tent for prompt #10 ‘Nomadic’.
When you get to prompt #22 ‘Camp’, you might wish you could draw a tent but now have to come up with something else.
The 2024 list has many synonymous prompts. Avoid the risk of doing double by prepping in advance.
2. Gather References
Gather references for each prompt. This may sound time-consuming but it will save you energy in the long run.
Sketching from imagination is thrilling and most of us would rather draw spontaneously than refer to a photo image. But creating one hundred percent from imagination is only efficient when you have years of practice amassing a huge memory bank.
Photo references help you get unstuck when you face a drawing problem.
Pixabay is one of my go-to sites for royalty-free images. Just type in the prompt and the search engine will sort results as a subject or as a concept.
Limit your search time to a few minutes per prompt.
Resist the temptation to pick “cool” concepts – unless you have time to execute that illustration.
A poorly executed prompt due to lack of time is demoralizing, you’ll soon want to quit. Therefore, aim for uncomplicated subjects that you can draw fast and confidently.
Gather those references into a folder. Convert each image to grayscale and adjust the contrast for more obvious highlights and shadows.
These steps ensure that your time goes towards inking without wasting energy searching for the best concepts or re-doing a prompt that didn’t turn out because you were winging it.
3. Gather Supplies
As part of my prep work, I quartered 8 pages of letter-sized inking paper into small sheets.
Smaller paper means less surface to ink.
I got the small-format idea from Kasey Golden’s YouTube video. She inspired me to try the 31-prompts in one-day challenge.
For visual consistency, I used the same supplies and line style for all 31 prompts. The supplies are listed in the resources section of this post.
Having all the thinking and gathering done beforehand ensures you can focus on completing the challenge without distractions.
4. To Do or Not Do a Theme
In previous years, I did a theme with the prompts:
- 2021 – a character and her raven companion
- 2022 – different birds with critters
- 2023 – all ravens
Kasey weaved her original characters into the prompts within her 1-day challenge. It worked because she drew subjects that she was very familiar with. So, it was quick and stimulating for her to do a theme.
Looking at the 2024 list, the ‘Trek’, ‘Hike’, and ‘Backpack’ prompts are already themed.
Actually, the majority of this year’s prompts have an outdoor adventure travel vibe. If I were doing the 31 prompts throughout both September and October, I’d opt for a theme.
A theme is exciting. Reversely, it can add a layer of complexity to your challenge.
Since I’m doing all 31 prompts in a single day, sticking to minimalist doodles for my 2024 Inktober is a safer plan.
To do or not do a theme is best sorted as part of your preparation. If you know where you’re going, you’ll get there more directly.
5. Keep Track of Time
Decide how long you can invest in each prompt.
2021 was my first Inktober. I had basic drawing experience at a beginner level. My goal was to stay consistent and create illustrations I could be proud of. And so, 4 hours per prompt, including research, felt like a realistic timeframe to achieve that goal.
As I gained experience, I cut down to 2 hours per prompt in 2022 and then to 45 minutes in 2023 without a significant loss in quality.
The benefit of planning your Inktober and administrating your time is that all your prompts will be executed under similar criteria. Then you can benchmark your progress year after year.
Without a plan, doing prompts sporadically, you might spend four hours on some and a half-hour on the rest. These are inconsistent, so not a reliable way to benchmark progress prompt-to-prompt, year to year.
A stopwatch with an alarm is super helpful to keep you on track. As the clock ticks, you become more decisive with your strokes and focused on the task.
For my one-day challenge. I did the prep work the day before and calculated 25 minutes to sketch and ink each prompt.
I started with 25 minutes on the timer, reduced it to 20, then 15 minutes by the 4th prompt.
I soon got into a rhythm, less nervous and more efficient. Fifteen minutes was enough.
6. Participate but Don’t Compare
The best part about participating in an epic art challenge like Inktober is sharing your work and seeing the work of others.
It can also be the worst.
Let me explain.
I talked about time. Whether time invested into each drawing or time invested in developing skills year after year.
When we see what others have posted as their daily prompts, we rarely know the full context in which these were done.
We’re at different levels, each working towards various goals within unique constraints.
Some of us share artwork to take part in the event, while others will post their most outstanding pieces.
Regardless of experience level, 15 minutes is a very short time to produce a decent-looking pen and ink drawing. Therefore, I shifted my expectations, knowing there would be a compromise in quality from what I normally share publicly. And I’m okay with that.
My tip here is whatever energy you put into this art challenge, it’s more enjoyable when done in the spirit of participation rather than as a competition.
7. Strategies for Difficult Prompts
Some prompts will be difficult.
Difficult because you find them boring or they’re highly technical to draw accurately under time pressure.
The ‘Drive’ prompt was tricky because I didn’t want to draw a car. Plus there was already a ‘Road’ prompt. My solution was to emphasize the driving part by camouflaging the car and road with a snowstorm. This strategy highlighted the story rather than the subject.
‘Camera’ was a technical item to draw. To get around that, I drew a simplified side-view of the camera and added a meerkat as a supporting element in the picture plane. Adding a supporting element is another strategy to shift the viewer’s attention from the subject to the story aspect.
Another trick I used to place less emphasis on the prompt was to vary the composition.
For ‘Hike’, ‘Remote’, and ‘Camp’, I made the prompts super tiny and balanced the composition with nature elements.
For ‘Navigator’ and ‘Violin’ I zoomed in on the main subject, making them large so they would be cropped off the page. This way, the viewer can complete the image in their mind and I don’t have to draw the entire subject.
These strategies helped keep the prompts interesting for me, non-technical to draw, and under 15 minutes to complete.
Bonus Tip – Take Breaks
To complete all 31 prompts in one day, I woke up at 4:11 AM and finished the last prompt at 11:33 PM.
I took an hour for lunch and went on two nature walks in the afternoon.
Although pressed for time, the breaks sustained me through this ultimate effort.
Regardless of which version of Inktober you do, it’s important to monitor fatigue levels. We all know that health comes first.
If you’re struggling halfway through your challenge, read: The Last Push to Finish Strong.
It wasn’t easy but doable and rewarding! If you want to join the ultimate speed version of Inktober 2024 completing all 31 prompts in a day challenge, those were the top tips that helped me get it done.
