Ben Crothers

Setting yourself challenges — and sticking to them — is a sure-fire way to get better at something. And let’s face it: unless you have a personal trainer or you’re a student in something, it’s pretty rare that someone is going to set a challenge for you. I don’t know a single project manager who puts a few extra days in their Gantt chart for you to exercise some professional development time.

You have to set them yourself. But then, that’s more gratifying anyway, isn’t it? And so, when Inktober floated past in my river of social media stuff, I grabbed it with both hands. Inktober is simple: do an ink drawing every day for the month of October. People have been at this since 2009, and it’s growing every year.

A huge thanks to Jake Parker for starting it! I had loads of fun with this. Here are all mine for 2016:

Oct 1 – Fast

I was a day late when I started, so I didn’t end up following the theme of ‘Fast’ for this one:

Oct 2 – Noisy

Oct 3 – Collect

Oct 4 – Hungry

This was a quickie I did on a whiteboard at work:

Oct 5 – Sad

Oct 6 – Hidden

I’d been itching to a bit of fantasy sketching…

Oct 7 – Lost

Oct 8 – Rock

Oct 9 – Broken

Cats started to become a bit of a meta-theme in my sketches…

Oct 10 – Jump

Oct 11 – Transport

Oct 12 – Worried

Oct 13 – Scared

Oct 14 – Tree

I’d also been itching to try different sketching styles during Inktober, and using colour in a different way. This one was particularly fun to do.

Oct 15 – Relax

Oct 16 – Wet

Oct 17 – Battle

Oct 18 – Escape

Oct 19 – Flight

Oct 20 – Squeeze

For ages I couldn’t think what to do for this theme, and then this idea came to me first thing in the morning. It looks better with my hand over it (below)

My turn to catch up! #inktober No.20 “SQUEEZE” #inktober2016 pic.twitter.com/LkcFRuJYu5

— Ben Crothers (@bencrothers) October 22, 2016

 

Oct 21 – Big

This was just a chance to play with Copic tint markers…

Oct 22 – Little

Oct 23 – Slow

All the hype about Agile and Lean has always bothered me a little bit, especially the promise of SPEED that seems to tag along with it. Neither mindsets/ways of working are actually about speed, but that’s what people seem to latch on to. Some things really do take time.

Oct 24 – One dozen

Oct 25 – Tired

Oct 26 – Box

This was actually drawn on a placemat from a hotel restaurant I was at for work.

Oct 27 – Creepy

Oct 28 – Burn

Oct 29 – Surprise

Oct 30 – Wreck

I guess something from Star Wars had to make an appearance somewhere

Oct 31 – Friend

The final Inktober sketch coincided with more news about the cruel mistreatment of asylum seekers in offshore detention, so this seemed pretty fitting.

See you for Inktober next year!