Inktober over the last Four years

I started doing drawing challenges from 2015, with Inktober. I wrote and drew about people and posted them on Social Media. I got a lot of positive feedback from my friends and family. People really looked forward to my posts even on days when I second guessed my art and felt I lacked skill. This made me stronger and want to pursue art even more.

From top to bottom (L to R) Kadambari, Limsa, Nerkundram and Pasupathi.

I continued drawing on a daily basis after this. I carried around a sketchbook, paints and almost every art material I ever owned in my bag just in case I needed to use it and I looked forward to the Inktober challenge every year.

And soon the next year rolled out and I was ready with my writing and drawing for Inktober 2016. I wrote around the theme of falling and failing.

From L to R: Boy falling because of cow, Girl failing at drawing and girl dropping eggs in the rain.

I could see a huge improvement especially on the days I spent more time researching, drawing and painting. So each year became something I looked forward to, especially October because it is inking and personal challenge time. And for 2017 I wanted to spin a tale around animals while talking also about disability and disability laws in India. I didn’t cover a lot in the disability aspect but did what I read to the best of my abilities. The stories are set in interview style of different animals for the first half of the month about something that happened in the forest at a particular date, the next half of the month we explore the event a sit occurred and possible causes.

I wrote an interview style story around a forest fire.

And in 2018 I started to draw my comic, Jamun and Potol are two stray dogs who reside on the Chennai beach. But, I stopped with 15 days because I had a very taxing full time job and I was very tired.

But I resumed writing Jamun and Potol the next year 2019. I had written it around how they wish to move from one side of the beach to next.

Aside from this, I was featured in many local newspapers for my inktober challenges. I made friends and built an audience on my social media platforms and my art is ever growing. What have I learnt from all of this?

I wish to make Jamun and Potol into like an animated TV series with writers and animators! I hope I can do it someday soon.