Last year, I tried a simplified version of Inktober, which is basically just a challenge to draw something every day in October. There’s an official list of prompts, and people often share their work online (Instagram?) with the appropriate tags. In addition to improving your skills with practice, I guess the idea is to get inspiration from what others are doing while also possibly boosting your own exposure and attracting people who like what you do (especially for aspiring professional artists).
In October 2025, I kept my challenge a personal one only, just to draw something every day of the month and post the photos here on my blog. I tried to combine the prompt word with dogs—a subject I’d like to get better at doodling.
I think I lost steam pretty quickly in the process and came to the conclusion that month-long challenges may not be for me, but I guess I still have some degree of FOMO about these challenges. I’ve been going back and forth over whether or not I’d try another version of Inktober this year. There’s another similar challenge running in October—something called Peachtober. Then there’s Calmtober, which has prompts just for every other day.
I seriously considered trying Calmtober, but I think I may actually have more trouble doing that one, in some ways. (It seems harder to remember to do something every other day than to remember to do it daily.) Then there’s the fact that we have a puppy in the house, and he still takes a fair bit of extra time and energy every day. Probably not the best time to commit to anything too elaborate or demanding.
I think I’ve decided to do my own thing this year, and I’m calling it “Artober”. I’m certain there’s already something out there going by that name, but it doesn’t matter. This is just for my own amusement.
My Rules of Artober
I’m keeping it simple. The only real rule is to spend at least a few minutes every day in the month of October doing something artistic and creative.
It can be doodling.
It can be painting.
It can be collage.
It can be gel printing.
It can even be swatching color palettes.
It can be any medium or media you choose, which can change day by day as you wish.
It’s 100% freestyle and doesn’t follow any prompt list, but you can borrow ideas wherever you find them, including other challenges’ prompts.
It can be a complete page/project in a session/day or just working on an on-going page/project.
I intend to post here daily or at least every 2 or 3 days about what I’ve done each day, even if there’s not much to report. (Part of the challenge for me is blogging more frequently.)
Artober 1st Project
Today, I continued working on a page I started a couple of days back. I wanted another Halloween-ish subject and thought about a gallery wall of portraits (mainly) of cartoonishly creepy characters.
Here’s what it looked like after I sketched the gallery wall with a simple black pen:
And here’s how it looked this evening, before I started working on it for today:
(Excuse the shadow on the left side in these two photos… I didn’t notice until I was editing the photos and didn’t feel like taking more photos, especially since I’m still not finished and will be taking at least one more photo of the page.)
This is where I left it after a little more watercolor tinting tonight:
As you can see, I still have the frames to do, as well as a few more finishing touches for the portrait with the evil tree, but it’s nearly done.
I don’t think I’ll paint the background at all. Too fiddly with too little potential reward for the effort involved. Besides, I’m getting tired of this one and want to do something new tomorrow!
That said, this has been a fun page! I really enjoyed doodling it.
