Inking differently in October

The clocks have turned back, the sky is turning inky black, so we must be nearing the end of Inktober. If you’ve been following us on social media you may have seen us sharing a series of inky sketches.

This is a project started in 2009 to encourage and improve inking skills and develop good drawing habits. The idea is simple - for every day of October you create a simple image in ink (nothing digital!) based on a one-word prompt and then share this to your social media account of choice with the hashtags #inktober and #inktober2025.

Long-time followers of our blog will remember I attempted this some years ago. This work was shared on Twitter, which we’ve long since ceased to use, so any existing links there won’t work now. However, this year, both Matt and myself at Drawnalism have been posting drawings on alternating days and sharing the artwork here, and to our BlueSky and LinkedIn accounts.

At Drawnalism, we’ve been working primarily digitally for many years, and prior to that, working with marker pens, but we started life as cartoonists drawing with traditional pen and ink tools - my personal preference, the Gillott 1290 dip-nib along with Indian ink. It’s been a little of a challenge dusting off the old nibs, but we remember them fondly (although perhaps less to the indelible mess they can create), and have reflected this in our tiered pricing structure of Copper, Steel and Gold nibs.