Artists, get your pens ready. October is almost upon us, and you know that means, Inktober draws near.  

For the uninitiated, Inktober is a month-long drawing challenge where artists draw in ink, either physically or digitally, each day in October. While you can let your creative juices flow and create whatever you like, Inktober provides a prompt list for inspiration.

Artists may then choose to share their works on social media using hashtags #inktober and #inktober2024. If the artist prefers to not post online, they can share it with a friend, as one of the main goals of Inktober is to share and build community. 

Unlike in previous years, in Inktober’s annual prompt reveal on Instagram, the organization shared they will be doing a theme for the prompts for the first time. 

“Are you ready for this? We thought we’d try having a little bit of a theme to the prompts this year,” said the Inktober team via the post. “Hopefully this inspires your creativity in a different way than years past.” 

This revelation was met with mixed to negative reactions by commenters on the initial post. Some find this theme boring, repetitive and less nuanced than in previous challenges. There are some even throwing around accusations of AI generation. 

Regardless of what side of the fence you sit on, this Inktober is sure to be one to remember with this change in tradition. 

The challenge was created in 2009 by artist Jake Parker to help improve his inking drawing skills and make better drawing habits. Parker also posts his own illustrations for each year’s Inktober on his webpage.

While the traditional way to partake in the challenge is to do 31 days of drawing throughout October, a new method was created in 2020 and 2021 called Inktober52, in which artists could choose to make a single drawing each week of the year. 

This year the official Inktober52 theme is “chase,” as revealed in an Instagram post last week. 

While portrayed as a challenge, the end goal of Inktober is to have fun and draw more often. There is no perfect way to complete the challenge, and in the end, each participant should make it their own.