Artistic students challenge themselves with Inktober

This October, an artistic trend has been making its way around the Internet. Inktober is a concept created by artist Jake Parker in 2009. According to Parker, he came up with the idea in an effort to improve his drawing habits.

Not surprisingly, Inktober has also become popular among student artists. The rules are of the challenge simple: Draw something in ink, post it with “#Inktober” on some form of social media and repeat the process every day for the rest of the month.

Students participating in Inktober include seniors Joli Chien, Matthew Petterson, Joyce Zhang and Katherine Liu.

Although art is often seen as a solitary activity, Chien finds motivation from her “fellow artists.”

“It really helps to look at other people's art and sometimes, when I can't think of what to draw, I'll just start something random and see what comes from it,” Chien said.

Chien described her art style as being a mixture of precise and detailed pieces along with looser, and even messy works.

Some of her pieces include a Darth Vader in honor of the senior class Homecoming theme, a cherry blossom tree and a kite.

For Inktober, Chien simply uses ink and paper to create her artwork.

“I have pens especially made for inking, so I usually use those to do the basic outline and shading, and then I use colored pens to brighten things up,” she said.

Although Inktober is exciting for Chien, she said “keeping up with everything and being able to think of what to draw” poses challenges. According to Chien, it’s easy for her to run out of ideas when she has to draw something every day.

Even though Chien enjoys sharing her own artwork with the online community, her favorite part of Inktober is seeing the work that other people come up with.

“It's not often that you see people willingly post their art for the public to see, so it's really exciting to see that so many people share my love for art,” she said.